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Shakespeare's Portrayal of the 
Moral Life 



Shakespeare's Portrayal 

of 

The Moral Life 



By 
FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the 
University of Wisconsin 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1902 



THF UI8HABY OP 
CONGRESS, 

T«t> Co«>lt:H RBOCIVED 

seP. P3 1902 

OoovnnHT entry 

CI ,ASS ^ XXc No. 

COI»Y 3. 






Copyrightj igo2 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 



All rights raewed 



ITNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
AND SON ■ CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



TO 
PROFESSOR CHARLES E. GARMAN 

IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

Intboduction ix 

Chapter 

I. A Study of Motives 1 

II. Transcendentalism 29 

III. The Criterion of Right and Wrong . 64 

IV. The Nature of the Good 77 

V. Conscience and the Conscienceless . 97 

VI. The Freedom of the Will .... 131 

VII. Virtue and Happiness 159 

VIII. Ethics and Metaphysics 204 



INTRODUCTION 

If conduct be " three-fourths of life," or in other 
words if all deliberate action have a moral bearing, 
Shakespeare's description of the moral world is but 
a name for his collected works. Accordingly, since 
nothing that is broadly human was foreign to his 
mind, or failed of at least a passing notice at his 
hands, the title of the following study would seem 
to be as comprehensive as that of the professorship 
founded for Professor Teufelsdrockh at the Uni- 
versity of Weiss-nicht-wo. The aim of this under- 
taking, however, is a modest one. Using as our 
material the concrete facts of life as they appear 
in the pages of the great dramas, we shall merely 
attempt to discover what light they throw upon 
a single group of ethical problems. Manifestly 
such an inquiry may be confined within definite 
limits. 

The problems of ethics fall into two distinct 
classes. First, the moral life of the race as it 
actually exists and has existed calls for description 
and explanation. Starting from the phenomena 
of moral approval and disapproval, in other words, 
from the fact that certain actions are judged right 
and others wrong, we here ask : What is the nature 



X Introduction 

of the moral judgment, to what kinds of action does 
it attach itself, and under what conditions does it 
arise ? Under these few rubrics may be disposed 
a long series of familiar topics : the standard or 
standards by which conduct is judged, the nature 
of conscience and its mode of working, the nature 
and source of the consciousness of obligation, the 
conditions under which responsibility is imputed 
(the ethical side of the free-will controversy), and 
the relation of metaphysical and theological beliefs 
to morality. Others closely related, as the connec- 
tion between character and happiness, and the 
dynamics of virtue and of crime, will naturally 
suggest themselves in the course of such an inquiry. 
In the exploration of this broad field a second set 
of problems soon presents itself. For the morality 
that is proves to be a mass of inconsistencies and 
in part absurdities. Accordingly the question 
forces itself upon us. How can we reduce the moral 
judgments of mankind to a consistent and reason- 
able system, where the word " reasonable " means 
that which would approve itself to a mind cog- 
nizant of and sensitive to all the facts of human 
experience. The first part of a complete treatise 
on ethics is thus in method a science, the second 
an art. 

To the catholic mind both of these departments 
of inquiry are alike interesting and important. 
Every wise man will accept with gladness any as- 
sistance in either direction which the skilled 
observer of human life is able to offer him. Un- 



Introduction xi 

fortunately, however, the aid that Shakespeare can 
give us is limited to the descriptive branch of the 
subject. Of what he thought about the art of 
living — and this includes the art of judging — we 
have no direct and little indirect evidence. There 
are, indeed, certain historical romances masquerad- 
ing under the name of biographies that profess to 
inform us what he thought and how he felt upon 
almost every subject of human interest. But their 
results are obtained by picking out from the varied 
deliverances of his characters those with which the 
novelist happens to agree. Criticism upon such a 
method seems superfluous. I at all events shall 
not attempt to use it. I shall confine myself to 
an account of the moral life as it is represented 
upon Shakespeare's stage. I shall treat his char- 
acters as if they were living beings, whose con- 
sciousness we — happy peepers and botanizers — 
were permitted to explore. My descriptions, of 
course, must be in general terms ; but the formulae 
in which they are presented will be mine, — objec- 
tive statements, as far as possible, of what I dis- 
cover in my journey through the world he has 
created. What thoughts arose in the dramatist's 
mind as he contemplated his creations thus becomes 
a matter with which I have nothing to do. Not 
merely how he criticised but also how he general- 
ized are subjects that alike fall outside the inquiry 
that is here proposed. 

How far these offspring of a poet's imagination 
resemble the men and women with whom scientific 



xii Introduction 

ethics attempts to deal, I have in the main re- 
frained from considering. There is as yet no suffi- 
cient concensus of experts in this field to make the 
subject worth discussing, although we are un- 
doubtedly nearer the goal than we were a genera- 
tion ago. At only one point has a departure from 
this plan seemed desirable, namely in the study of 
moral pathology. The reasons for making an ex- 
ception in this case will appear in their proper 
place. 

But while questions of truth and error are 
allowed for the most part to pass unconsidered, 
the following study is not intended as a mere ex- 
ercise in literary interpretation. It is an attempt 
to lay before the reader the results of the observa- 
tions of a man who was one of the most gifted 
students of human nature the world has ever seen. 
The record that he left no worker in the humani- 
ties can afford to neglect. No worker, in fact, does 
neglect it. But the concreteness of its form and 
the intermixture of irrelevant material — irrelevant 
from the point of view of science — which is the 
consequence of the motives that brought it into 
being, these have operated to render much it could 
teach us practically non-existent. For this reason 
it has seemed worth while to re-write that portion 
which deals with the moral life. In the process 
its beauty dies and for many people its interest 
entirely disappears. There may be some, how- 
ever, who will care to make a systematic review of 
the materials which the great observer has col- 



Introduction xiii 

lected. In this hope the present experiment has 
been hazarded. 

In order to get Shakespeare's powers at their 
best, I have confined myself as far as possible to 
those dramas which received their present form 
after the close of the year 1600, or in other words? 
to the works of the third and fourth periods accord- 
ing to the common classification. These dramas, 
it will be remembered, were written during the last 
ten, or at most twelve years of the poet's literary 
life, after an apprenticeship, if such we can call it, 
that had begun, at the very latest, as far back as 
1590. It has not, indeed, proved practicable to 
exclude all references to the earlier works, espe- 
cially the English histories. But it will be found 
that, where issues of importance are at stake, it is 
tlie four great tragedies, the Roman and Greek 
histories, the small group of romances, and the 
so-called comedies. All 's Well that Ends Well, 
and Measure for Measure, that supply in the main 
the material for our investigation. 



Shakespeare's 
Portrayal of the Moral Life 

CHAPTER I 

A STUDY OF MOTIVES 

The fundamental fact of the moral life is the 
approval and disapproval of conduct. It might 
therefore be expected that our first topic would 
be an account of the moral judgments expressly 
enunciated by Shakespeare's characters. Such in- 
deed would be the prescription of logic. But the 
nature of the material at our disposal compels us 
to begin with a study of the motives in which the 
life of action has its source. True it is not with 
conduct, but with judgments upon conduct, that 
ethics as such has to deal, yet no absolute line of 
demarcation can be drawn between the two. Every 
action entitled to the name of voluntary is the out- 
come of a judgment approving it, pronouncing it 
an action that for some reason, or perhaps for many 
reasons, it is well to perform. These reasons are 
the motives. A study of motives is thus a study 
of the points of view from which conduct may be 

1 



2 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

approved, and a complete enumeration of the mo- 
tives, persuasive and dissuasive, operating in any 
given case would, therefore, reveal to us the totality 
of the grounds on which the judgment of the agent 
was passed at the moment of action. Any such 
enumeration might seem to involve a hopeless 
task on account of the multitude of the threads 
that enter into the fabric of even the most com- 
monplace life. But by confining our attention 
to the highest types of moral endeavor we so 
far narrow the field that it can be explored, while 
at the same time we omit nothing that is really 
essential. At the conclusion of our inquiry, we 
should accordingly expect to be in possession of 
the data with which to construct a theory of moral 
judgments. 

Our study of motives may fittingly begin with an 
examination of King Lear, that tremendous drama 
of struggling optimism in which are disclosed the 
sublimest heights and deepest abysses of human 
character. What inspired the humanity of Al- 
bany and the devotion of Gloucester, Edgar, and 
Kent ? Let us listen to the confession of that 
loyal servant who has more than once been pro- 
nounced the most perfect character in Shake- 
speare. The childish old king, thrown into a fit of 
petulance at the ruin of a pretty little theatrical 
effect through what he considers the unreasonable 
obstinacy of one of the actors, has just disowned 
his best-loved daughter and parted her patrimony 
between her sisters. Kent attempts for the sec- 



A Study of Motives 3 

ond time to interpose, when Lear with mounting 
passion cries : 

" Kent, on thy life, no more. 
Kent. My life I never held but as a 

pawn I<ear I. L 

To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to 

lose it, 
Thy safety being the motive." 

"What made his master's safety his motive ? He 
himself tells us as he enters in disguise the palace 
from which but a few days before he had been 
driven as an exile : 

" Now, banish'd Kent, 

If thou canst serve where thou dost stand 

condemned, , . . 

I. IV. 4. 
So may it come, thy master, whom thou 

lovest, 

Shall find thee full of labours." 

"Thy master whom thou lovest!" This is the 
key to a devotion which did not ask that master's 
favor, which survived his prosperity and the in- 
tegrity of his mind, — a devotion which was no 
mere selfish clinging to an object of affection as 
was Antony's passion for Cleopatra, but rather 
the visible expression of a spirit of self-forgetting 
service quickened by veneration, love, and pity. 
In the wild night on the heath, when the dis- 

1 The text of all quotations from Shakespeare and the num- 
bering of lines follow the Globe Edition. 



4 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

guised nobleman and the fool are trying to prevail 
upon Lear to take refuge in the hovel, the old king 
turning to his companion plaintively asks, " Wilt 
break my heart ? " Answers Kent : " I had rather 
break mine own." This is not declama- 
tion, it is prophecy. For as soon as the 
strain was over and his charge had been brought in 
safety to the French camp, the summons came call- 
ing him to his long home. While recounting to 
Edgar Lear's wanderings " his grief grew 
puissant, the strings of life began to 
crack," and he fell tranced to the ground. The 
warning voice was not misunderstood. Come to 
bid his king and master aye good-night, he sees 
that master gently carried before him through the 
portal. He scarcely notes that with a new ruler a 
better era is to dawn, for his thought is fixed upon 
the journey he must shortly go. The end is at 
hand ; and soon, like the faithful fool, he will 
have " gone to bed at noon." 

While in Kent altruism, or the spirit of service, 
derives its strength primarily from love, in Glouces- 
ter we find it awakened by the emotion of pity. 
" Alack, alack, Edmund," he says to his son after 
Lear has rushed out into the storm, " I like not this 
unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that 
I might pity him, they took from me the 
use of mine own house." Soon he is 
compelled to formulate his motives in the presence 
of the infuriated daughters and the Duke of Corn- 
wall, for they have been informed by the treacher- 



A Study of Motives 5 

ous Edmund of his final attempt to serve Lear by 
sending the old king to Cordelia. 

Cornwall. Where hast thou sent the king? 
Gloucester. To Dover. 
Began. Wherefore to Dover? 

Gloucester. Because I would not see thy cruel nails 

Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister 

In his anointed flesh stick bearish fangs. 

The sea, with such a storm as his bare head 

In hell-black night endured, would have in. vii. 50. 

buoy'd up, 
And queuch'd the stelled fires : 
Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain. 
If wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time, 
Thou shouldst have said " Good porter, turn the key," 
All cruels else subscribed. 

Pity, too, is the source of Albany's devotion to the 
cause of Lear, if we may believe the taunts of his 
ferocious wife. When at last he has been forced 
to open his eyes to the true nature of this woman, 
he turns upon her and tries to blast her with invec- 
tive. Utterly unmoved she retorts : 

''Milk-liver'd man! 
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for 
wrongs : 

IV. ii. 60. 

that not know'st 
Fools do those villains pity who are pun- 

ish'd 
Ere they have done their mischief." 



L. 70. 



6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Goneril is reproaching him, it will be remembered, 
for delaying to take the field against the French 
army which has entered England to restore her 
father to the throne. Almost the next moment 
brings her new evidence of the workings of com- 
passion. In the midst of their mutual recrimina- 
tions a messenger enters bearing the information : 

" The Duke of Cornwall 's dead : 
Slain by his servant, going to put out 
The other eye of Gloucester. 
Albany. Gloucester's eyes ! 
Messenger. A servant that he bred, thrill'd 

with remorse [pity], 
Opposed against the act, bending his sword 
To his great master." 

It is to this same emotion that Cordelia's thought 
spontaneously turns as the natural restraint upon 
inhuman deeds : 

" Had you not been their father, these white 
IV. vii. 30. flakes 

Had challenged pity of them. 

And the hard-hearted Edmund apparently shares 
her view of the place of this motive in the system 
of human incentives. For he reminds the soldier 
sent to kill Cordelia, " to be tender- 
minded does not become a sword." 
A study of the place of love and pity in the other 
plays would lead to similar results. They are not 
merely recognized as forces that exist; they are 



A Study of Motives 7 

counted among the most important incitements to 
service, the most powerful and widely diffused re- 
straints upon selfishness and passion. It Tempest i. 
was pity that moved Prospero to teach "• ^53. 
Caliban ; it was pity to the general wrong of Rome 
that drove from the heart of Brutus the j. c. in. i. 
pity for his friend ; it was pity (or hu- 165-172. 
manity) that moved Pisanio to disobey his master's 
command to murder Imogen ; and this cym. in. ii. 
same humanity that made Camillo at the 16-17. 
risk of his life and in the face of certain exile warn 
Polixenes of the death prepared for him w. T. ni. 
by his friend and host. The belief in "• ^^S- 
the universality and the power of pity is attested 
by the fact that to it the suppliant habitually ad- 
dresses his principal appeal ; so Arthur in King 
John, Isabella in Measure for Measure, and Marina 
in Pericles. 

In the preceding description altruism has been 
represented as aroused by some strong emotion. 
There is, however, a calm regard for another's good 
which is capable of moving to action, just as the 
apprehension of our own good may control our 
conduct without the intervention of any appreciable 
feeling. Does Shakespeare recognize and report 
this fact? The answer is not easy to give. The 
little that can be said on the subject may best be 
reserved for another place.^ 

It will now be clear that altruism is represented 
by Shakespeare as one of the most important factors 
1 See p. 38. 



8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

in the moral life. This suggests the question : Do 
his men and women, after the fashion of some well- 
known moralists, identify virtue with altruism, or 
do they recognize the pursuit of what are primarily 
personal goods to be legitimate or even obligatory ? 
Before attempting an answer, certain possible mis- 
understandings must be cleared from the way. It 
has often been asserted that there is no real con- 
flict between altruism and egoism, that your good 
is my good, because what is for your best interest 
is for my best interest also. The data upon which 
this assertion rests do not concern us here ; but 
even if they be permitted to pass unchallenged the 
conclusion drawn from them involves what has been 
called the psychologist's fallacy. This form of 
muddle-headedness consists in the substitution of 
the point of view of the observer who is acquainted 
with all the relevant facts for that of the person he 
is observing. Manifestly if the agent believes him- 
self to be making a sacrifice, a conflict with his 
egoism may actually take place. Manifestly such 
a person may ask himself how far the spirit of ser- 
vice ought to be allowed to carry him. Again, it 
has been urged that self-sacrifice does not represent 
any assignable phenomenon of human life, that 
what goes by that name is the identification of my 
own good with the good of another, the making of 
his good mine. The substance of this contention 
must be granted, but there still remains the prob- 
lem : Within the area of my own good how much 
consideration ought to be shown for that which is 



A Study of Motives 9 

my good solely because it is another's, and that 
which is mine independently of what the other's 
interests may be ? No analytical subtleties can 
volatilize into nothingness the world-old struggle 
with this perplexity. 

We accordingly enter upon no barren inquiry 
when we study the claims of egoism against altru- 
ism as conceived by the people of Shakespeare's 
world. At the outset one fact emerges with unmis- 
takable clearness. The ideals of what is due as 
between friend and friend, servant and master, 
benefitted and benefactor, and in general those who 
stand in some exceptionally close relation to each 
other, are uniformly set very high. Witness Isa- 
bella and Cordelia, Antonio, the merchant of Venice, 
and Coriolanus, who throws away vengeance and 
honor at the prayer of his mother. Witness the 
gruff soldier Enobarbus,who takes his life in remorse 
at having abandoned a master who had long for- 
feited all claims to his allegiance. But the obliga- 
tions to service are not limited to those who can 
urge special claims. Camillo gives up what he 
most loves, and risks his life to save the life of 
Polixenes, a stranger and a foreigner. What he 
suffered in leaving his native land, a w. T. iv. 
self-condemned exile, is shown by the "• ^^*^- 
passionate longing he feels to return to Sicily, not- 
withstanding the brilliant position that his judg- 
ment and character had won him at the court of 
his new master. It is the story of a single noble 
deed that we read in The Winter's Tale ; but 



lo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Antonio, Cerimon, and Timon in his palmy days, 
are represented as passing their entire lives in acts 
of helpfulness and service. What these men do, 
they and others approve. For they are not de- 
spised by their neighbors as eccentric fools ; but 
rather are they looked up to with humility and 
reverence, as men born to show their grosser fellows 
a more excellent way. 

Such lives need not betoken, however, a creed of 
complete self-abnegation. For some at least of the 
most altruistic characters distinctly recognize the 
existence of a proper limit to service. The Duke 
of Vienna, enumerating to Claudio the evils of 
life, treats as entirely legitimate the pursuit of 
ends having a purely personal value. In his 
M. for M. arraignment of the fate that ever holds 
m. i. 5-41. ^]jg good before our eyes but forbids us 
to grasp it with our hands, there is no trace of 
the dogma enunciated by Fichte : " Whoever 
thinks of his own interests as an interest at all, and 
desires any life and being whatever, and any self- 
ish indulgence whatever, save in the race and for 
the race, he is at bottom, whatever be the good 
works with which he seeks to hide his misshapen 
form, nothing but abase, despicable, utterly wicked, 
and at the same time unhappy man." An explicit 
assertion of the rights of self occurs during the" 
dispute between Orlando and his older brother in 
As You Like It. The latter having feigned 
compliance with the other's demand for an educa- 
tion and an allowance sufficient for his proper sup- 



A Study of Motives 1 1 

port, Orlando replies : " I will no further 

offend you than becomes me for my 

good." Still more unequivocal are the words of 

Rosencrantz to King Claudio : 

" The single and peculiar life is bound, 
With all the strength and armour of the Hamlet HI. 

mind, "i- H- 

To keep itself from noyance." 

Rosencrantz is not exactly a member of the moral 
elite ; but the force of what he says consists in the 
fact that it has the air of a commonplace, express- 
ing not merely what people do but what all would 
admit they ought to do. 

The principle stated in the words just quoted is 
often embodied in action. Isabella, — that spirit 
so pure that even the foul-mouthed Lucio holds 
her as a thing ensky'd and sainted, — Isabella de- 
clares herself willing to die but not willing to lose 
her soul in order to save her brother's „ 4, „ 

M. tor M. 

life. And while this of course does not li. iv. 105- 
represent her real motive for refusing ^^^' 
the infamous offer of Angelo, it is certainly a con- 
sideration that appeals to her as reasonable. The 
highly idealized Henry V. — " the mirror of all 
Christian kings" — never thinks of waiving his 
claim to what has fallen to him and his heirs by 
gift of heaven, and washes his hands of all respon- 
sibility for the bloodshed that will follow the asser- 
tion of his right. In leading the English army 
into France, his point of view is not that the laws 



1 1 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

of succession have imposed upon him a duty to 
others which he must not permit himself to shirk ; 
nor is it that we owe a duty to the world at large 
to maintain our personal rights, as Ihering insists 
in his Kampf urns Recht. Henry simply argues as 
follows : This fruitful land of France is mine ; 
therefore, let the consequences to others be what 
they may, I am justified in possessing myself of it. 
Where, then, lies the limit ? The son of Henry's 
royal opponent, on learning of the English demands, 
encourages his father to resist with the words : 
" Self-love is not so vile a sin as self -neglecting." 
Henry V. This, however, is no universally accepted 
n. iv. 74. axiom. We find Antonio professing 
himself willing to make any sacrifice, however 
extreme, for his kinsman Bassanio. And we know 
his are not empty professions. Desdemona, in like 
manner, assures Cassio of her readiness to do more 
otheUo III. for him than she dare for herself. 
IT. 130. Amidst this diversity of opinion we meet 
one statement that appears to rest upon a principle 
which has found a wide, though by no means uni- 
versal acceptance among moralists. When the 
Athenian senator is asked for a loan of money 
with which the most pressing obligations of the now 
bankrupt Timon may be met, he urges, by way of 
excuse for refusal, his own extreme necessities, and 
as major premise asserts : " I must not break my 
Timon of ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ finger." In this phrase 
Athens n. seems to be implicitly contained the 
^' doctrine that has been formulated by 



A Study of Motives 13 

Professor Sidgwick as follows : " One is morally 
bound to regard the good of any other individual 
as much as one's own, except in so far as we judge 
it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less cer- 
tainly knowable or attainable." ^ The fact that 
this maxim is used by a hypocritical ingrate as^ an 
excuse for the cold-hearted treatment of a former 
benefactor argues nothing against its value. For, 
as Coleridge has pointed out, some of Shakespeare's 
worst scoundrels give utterance to the profoundest 
moral truths. Since no one is represented as delib- 
erately and with foreknowledge breaking his back 
to heal another's finger, after the manner of 
Maggie Tulliver, we cannot tell how such a sacri- 
fice would have been regarded. At all events the 
limits set by this principle are those which the 
moral tact of Isabella teaches her to respect. 
When asked by Angelo how much she would do to 
save the life for which she pleads, the instant 
reply is : " As much for my poor brother as myself." 
The doctrine that in cases of conflicting jj f^j ji 
interests duty goes with the greater need rv. iv. 99. 
can thus claim at least one high-minded and en- 
lightened adherent. 

Which if any of these different views represents 
the dramatist's own position it is unnecessary to 
ask, even were it possible to answer. What is of 
interest is the fact that we find mirrored in Shake- 
speare's world the chaos of opinion on this subject 
which prevails in the society by which we are 

1 The Methods of Ethics ; Fourth Edition, p. 382. 



14 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

surrounded, and at the same time a wide-spread 
recognition that the moral ideal demands a bal- 
ance, a mean between absolute altruism and ab- 
solute egoism. 

Great as the emphasis placed upon self-forget- 
fulness may sometimes be, there is one personal 
good the desire for which is represented as not 
merely legitimate under all circumstances, but also 
as a normal constituent of the ideal character. 
This good is honor. The Trojan Hector, the Eng- 
lish Hotspur, the courtier Camillo, the merchant 
Antonio, the artless Desdemona, and Cato's heroic 
daughter, each could say with Brutus : " I love 
the name of honour more than I fear death." He 
who is dominated by such a spirit, provided he has 
at the same time a just sense of what it demands, 
Henry VIII. can do no wrong. " That you would 
I. ii. 14. love yourself, and in that love not un- 
consider'd leave your honour," ^ is for this reason 
the point of the petition which Queen Katharine 
carries to her royal husband in behalf of his op- 
pressed subjects. She believes that if the monarch's 
sense of honor can be actively enlisted her cause 
is safe. 

Honor is a somewhat ambiguous term. But the 
meaning it carries in Shakespeare's plays will ap- 
pear with perfect clearness if we examine the use 
of the corresponding verb. This connotes, we find, 
the two closely allied emotions of admiration and 

^ This passage occurs in a part of the play commonly assigned 
to Shakespeare. 



A Study of Motives 15 

respect. A sufficient example is the passage in 
Cymbeline, where the description of the virtues and 
excellences of Posthumus by one of his friends calls 
forth the exclamation on the part of his compan- 
ion, " I honour him even out of your 
report." In agreement with this usage, 
the love of honor will signify either a desire for the 
respect and admiration of others or a desire for the 
possession of those elements or traits of character 
which are the objects of respect and admiration. 

In the plays, as in real life, these two closely 
allied impulses are for the most part inextricably 
intertwined. Occasionally, however, one is dis- 
coverable in separation from the other. It is at 
honor in the exclusive sense of the admiration of 
his fellowmen that Falstaff is girding in his famous 
monologue on the eve of the battle of j jj^^ jy 
Shrewsbury. But while the fat knight v. i. 127- 
will have none of it, the desire for a 
good name is pictured as a dominant force in every 
generous nature. Thus Enobarbus, debating 
whether to remain true to his defeated master 
Antony, strengthens for the moment his failing 
loyalty by the reflection 

" He that can endure 

To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord . « « ttt 
° A. &< c. in. 

xiii. 43. 
earns a place i' the story." 

Potent as is the desire for the applause accom- 
panying elevation of character, it yields precedence 



1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

in the highest representatives of the race to the 
desire for the applauded thing itself. The nature 
of the spell which character exerts upon the noble 
mind can be indicated with exactness. For if that 
quality in virtue of which an object evokes ad- 
miration may properly be called beauty, then we 
may maintain with him of " the pasteboard and 
the battered hack " : " There are two kinds of 
beauty, the beauty of the body, and the beauty of 
the soul." To this aspect of the moral life, Shake- 
speare's people, true children of the Renaissance, 
were as sensitive as the Greeks. References to 
actions or to the character behind them as comely, 
fair, or beautiful, or on the other hand as foul or 
ugly, recur constantly ; and the phrase Ka\b<i Kaya- 
66<; — impressive witness of the completeness with 
which for the Greek mind the conceptions of the 
good and the beautiful were interwoven — actually 
meets us in English dress in the well-known pas- 
sage from Hamlet : 

"That monster, custom ... is angel yet 

Hamlet ^^ *^^^' 

ni. iv. 161. That to the use of actions fair and good 

He likewise gives a frock or livery, 

That aptly is put on." 

How literally these epithets may be interpreted is 
shown to demonstration by the words in which the 
Duke of Venice dismisses Desdemona's father from 
the council chamber : 



A Study of Motives 17 

"If virtue no delighted [delight-giving] 

beauty lack, OtheUo I. 

Your son-in-law is far more fair than iii- 290. 
black." 

Here moral and physical beauty are expressly 
placed in the same category. It is thus thoroughly 
in keeping with the attitude taken towards char- 
acter throughout the plays that their one ethical 
definition should read ; " Virtue is t. n. m. 
beauty." iv. 403. 

Beauty of character, like beauty in the realm of 
nature, discloses itself in varied forms. These we 
find not merely portrayed — as we should expect, 
— but also more or less explicitly analyzed. The 
definition just quoted from Twelfth Night occurs 
in a passage that begins : 

" In nature there 's no blemish but the 

^^^^5 Ill.iv 401. 

None can be call'd deform'd but the un- 
kind." 

By " unkind " our philosophical sea-captain means 
without gratitude or natural affection. Here 
is a recognition of the fact that the cf. Lear I. 
grateful and affectionate mind is di- ^^- 281. 
rectly attractive for its own sake, quite independ- 
ently of what any one can " get out of it." As 
such it is fairly entitled to be classed with the 
beautiful, A study of the eulogies scattered 
through the plays would show that the virtues of 
generosity, as in forgiving an enemy, of forbear- 

2 



1 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ance from self-assertion, which is a form of the 
same, and of the broad spirit of self-devotion to 
the common weal are in like manner valued for 
their own sakes. By parity of reasoning the 
adjective noble by which they are designated must 
be interpreted as possessing an aesthetic connotation. 

A second form of moral beauty, — one whose 
claim to the title no one would think of disputing, 
— is the display of will-power. Wherever we be- 
hold the strength that at need can crush passion 
and the lust for ease and pleasure, the courage 
that can face loss without flinching, the fortitude 
that can bear without a murmur, the patience that 
can work or wait for an issue long delayed, the 
energy that breaks down every obstacle, there we 
feel ourselves in the presence of a power whose 
least effect demands our homage, and whose 
higher manifestations bow us down in humility and 
awe, and make us think we " walk in hallowed 
cathedrals." 

It is obvious that power of will may exist dis- 
sociated largely or entirely from affection, grati- 
tude, generosity, or indeed any form of the altruistic 
spirit. Hence the two principles of beauty that 
have been described may come into conflict with 
each other. It is also possible that the spectator 
of life's drama may be so stunted in mind and 
heart as to be incapable of responding to the 
charm of affection and humanity. Naively assum- 
ing that no one else can possess what he lacks, he 
will interpret all devotion as the outcome of fear 



A Study of Motives 19 

or weakness of some sort, and thus as the mark of 
a slavish spirit. For such a one there can be 
nothing great in man but power. This view, pro- 
pounded long ago by the sophists of the Gorgias 
and the Republic, has been recently revamped by 
the German rhapsodist, Nietzsche, and forms the 
burden of the message which he has felt con- 
strained to bring to a Philistine world. Childish 
as are many of the dicta of this half-finished per- 
sonality, preposterous as is his " philosophy " when 
taken as a statement of the whole truth about man, 
there is unquestionably a certain grandeur in the 
ideal which he sets himself to recommend. " Beau 
comme une tempete, comme un abime," exclaims 
Renan of the career of Nietzsche's idol, Csesar 
Borgia, and few lovers of the Renaissance would 
gainsay him. Nevertheless, for the well-rounded 
mind such admiration is only possible through 
a certain effort of abstraction. And in proportion 
as the capacity to see or imagine the man and his 
actions in their entirety is developed, will repulsion 
tend to destroy enthusiasm where power appears 
dissevered from altruism. 

Similar changes of appreciation occur where the 
relation between these two qualities of will is re- 
versed. There are many amiable persons in the 
world who wish others well but who are incapable 
of overcoming any serious obstacle in their behalf. 
When such persons show equal inefficiency in 
the advancement of their personal interests and are 
at the same time free from gross passions, their 



20 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

■weakness is apt to be regarded by the superficial 
as at worst a mere peccadillo, at best as an actual 
addition to their charm. Henry VI. is a repre- 
sentative of this type. Tender-hearted, honorable, 
sincere, modest, a lover of his country, a partisan 
of the good cause, he lacks decision, energy, cour- 
age, and even pride, — in short, the power to assert 
himself in the face of opposition. For popular 
thought, despite these ominous deficiencies, he re- 
mains the " saintly king." Nevertheless he can- 
not escape the condemnation of the judicious. 
And though his fall may evoke our pity, it is 
not with us as when we see his noble uncle, 
the Lord Protector, worthy brother of Henry V., 
struck down by his enemies in the midst of his 
life work. 

In passing judgments upon character, however, 
we must not overlook the difference between 
absent power and latent power. Power can be 
revealed to its possessor and the world only as 
it is demanded for overcoming resistance. But 
there are those so harmoniously constituted that 
storm and conflict are strangers to their inner 
life. If this be due to a cowardly retreat in the 
presence of privation or danger, or to barrenness 
of the emotional and impulsive nature, the result 
either inspires contempt or appeals to us as in- 
sipid. But where there is great wealth of emo- 
tional endowment, a capacity for devotion to the 
highest ends which, though untried, is not without 
its witness, there we have a new variety of moral 



A Study of Motives 21 

beauty. In distinction from the heroic this may 
perhaps be called the idyllic. 

The keynote of the idyllic life is peace, peace 
with the world and with self. In such a nature 
there are no warring passions to be crushed, no 
temptations to profit at the expense of others to 
be overcome, while envy, hatred, and malice, that 
make man the enemy of man, have here no place. 
The authority of right is owned with glad self- 
surrender, and in the service of others is found 
the source of deepest and most permanent joy. 
To such a one Duty is no stern law-giver, nor 
does he know her except as a friend. 

" There are who ask not if thine eye 
Be on them ; who in love and truth, 
Where no misgiving is, rely 
Upon the genial sense of youth ; 
Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot 
Who do thy work and know it not." ^ 

The idyllic character is in some respects a direct 
antithesis to the heroic. The hero appears before 
us with his head surrounded by the halo of victory, 
but the pain of conflict has left its mark. For this 
reason, as Schiller has pointed out, the sublime in 
life always contains an ungesthetic element. But 
to the child of sunshine and of spring can fall no 
victor's crown, because he knows no strife. For 
what the hero accomplishes only at the cost of 
effort and pain, is for him a work of ease and joy. 

1 Wordsworth : Ode to Duty. 



22 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Nevertheless the antithesis is far from complete. 
In this world of jarring forces, untroubled peace 
usually comes as the fruit of conquest. On the 
other hand, there are instances where the soul has 
known nothing else. Endowed at birth with a 
temperament that turns to virtue as instinctively as 
a flower to the sun, that shrinks from the touch 
of sin as from the defilement of pitch, that knows 
no distinction between the interests of self and of 
others, its various impulses are so finely tempered 
and so exquisitely adjusted to each other that their 
spontaneous play is goodness. Like the lily of the 
field it is beautiful without toil, without care, with- 
out intention. Even here, however, the principle 
holds that the suggestion of power must not fail. 
Think for a moment of Perdita and Miranda, those 
fair forms that, glorified by all the resources of 
the poet's art, pass across the scene like visitors 
from a higher world. Wherein do they surpass 
a Henry YI. ? Is it not in this, that, whereas the 
latter can never be anything better than a carpet- 
knight, these two delicate creatures possess a 
strength and intensity of devotion which, if need 
arises, will lift them high into the sphere of the 
heroic ? 

It is not entirely true, then, that none can be 
called deformed but the unkind. He who em- 
bodies the ideal of goodness must be endowed in 
equal measure with the spirit of service and power 
of will. Think of Cordelia ; think of Horatio ; 
think of those two great characters that stand at 



A Study of Motives 23 

the summit of the creations of the second and 
fourth periods, Henry Y. and Prospero. With an 
amount of repetition that is unusual, this union of 
strength and unselfishness is declared to be the 
very substance of moral perfection : 

"Tliou hast affected the fine strains of 

, Cor. V. iii. 

lionour, 149; cf.M. 

To imitate the graces of the gods ; of V. IV. i. 

To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' i5*T^^Ii 

M. for M. 
the air, II. jj. 107- 

And yet to charge thy sulphur with a 117: Cym. 
bolt IV.U.169- 



That should but rive an oak." 



176. 



An age that lends its ear to every new voice 
will do well to heed this warning directed alike 
against sentimentalism and the worship of the 
Rauhmensch. 

The foregoing analysis will exhibit the error 
that lurks in a now popular doctrine. It is quite 
generally held that altruism, or the regard for my 
neighbor's interests, and honor in the sense of the 
regard for my own character, are but different 
names for the same thing. This confusion has its 
source in what has already been referred to as the 
psychologist's fallacy. Objectively considered, a 
man with a high sense of honor, guided by proper 
judgment and an adequate conception of responsi- 
bility, will be led by it to the same line of action as 
the man whose will is set in motion by the aware- 
ness of another's needs. It will often come to pass, 



24 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

therefore, that the desires to do ease to another and 
Hamlet I. grace to one's self will be indistinguish- 
i- 131. able except as the agent happens to be 

by profession or by nature an analyst. But that the 
motives are not identical is shown — if in no other 
way — by the fact that one may act where the other 
is totally wanting. 

This appears clearly in the career of Banquo, 
that would-be receiver of stolen goods, who has 
succeeded in imposing upon a long line of commen- 
tators. This canny Scotchman was perfectly in- 
different as to what happened to his sovereign, 
provided his own hands were not soiled in the oper- 

. ^ , ation. Like Sextus Pompey in a similar 

Antony and , _ ^ ^ •' 

Cleopatra situation he is willing to approve any- 
II. vii. 67-86- thing, provided he may be kept in igno- 
rance of it until the time for preventing it is past. 
The only difference is that Pompey forbids his cap- 
tain to carry out the treachery which would make 
him master of the civilized world, while in that very 
moment reproaching the same captain for not doing 
it without orders ; whereas Banquo simply asks 
that he may not be called upon to take an active 
part in the foul play which he suspects is being 
planned. It is quite true that Banquo might have 
been saved by a more adequate conception of re- 
sponsibility ; he does not seem to have compre- 
hended that a man is answerable not merely for 
what he does but also for what he can prevent. 
There is no evidence, however, that Kent was better 
instructed in the theory of responsibility than was 



A Study of Motives 25 

Banquo ; but his thoughts were primarily upon his 
king, not upon his character ; therefore, theories of 
responsibility were not necessary for him. 

What appears to be the same action may thus 
have its source in one of several different types 
of character. The representative of the first type 
is moved habitually by the desire for his own 
perfection ; he may thus act quite correctly though 
by nature icy cold. His neighbor, on the other 
hand, may be at times, or habitually, thoughtless of 
his own perfection. He serves others because he 
wishes them well. Finally these two sets of 
motives may be combined in the same individual, 
as in the case of Brutus. Whether a person shall 
belong to one class or another will depend partly 
upon temperament, partly, also, upon circumstances. 
Some men seem to have been born with a looking- 
glass before the face. On the other hand, moral 
self-consciousness may be the result of life in the 
midst of a corrupt society. It is mainly for this 
reason, I believe, that Isabella, the heroine of 
Measure for Measure is so sternly conscious of her 
virtues. Which of these types is most perfect it 
may not be necessary to determine. But the clear- 
sighted student who compares Isabella with 
Miranda will discover that the effects produced 
upon the spectator in the two cases are essentially 
different. 

If virtue be beautiful and thus attractive, it 
should follow that vice is hideous and repulsive. 
But this is not the whole truth. Certain forms of 



i6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

vice are not merely hateful in so far as they 
involve qualities the direct antitheses of the cor- 
responding virtues ; they possess, in addition, the 
power of arousing a sort of physical revulsion, 
direct, unreasoned, but sometimes of unmeasured 
intensity. 

The emphasis laid upon this fact by Shakespeare 
is a characteristic feature in his delineation of the 
moral life. The terms employed to describe the feel- 
ings are taken by preference from the senses of 
taste and smell. lachimo, tossed about by the winds 
Cym. I. vi. of lust and shame, cries out, " The cloyed 
*7. will longs for the garbage." King 

Claudius, awakening in a moment of remorse to 
the true nature of his crime, expresses the loathing 
Hamlet HI. with which it fills him in the words, " 0, 
iii. 36. my offence is rank, it smells to heaven." 

The climax of Timon's repulsions is expressed in 
the same terms. Timon of Athens having lavished 
his wealth upon sycophants and parasites finds 
himself in the day of his need utterly abandoned 
by these feeders on his bounty. In the prosecu- 
tion of a dramatic revenge he invites his false 
friends to a great feast. Upon the table stand the 
long rows of dishes as of old. But there is a new 
Timon m. tone in the host's invitation to partake : 
vi. 96. " Uncover, dogs, and lap," he cries. 

The dishes being uncovered are found to contain 
nothing but warm water. While the guests look 
at each other in amazement at this strange scene, 
Timon seizes the dishes, and throwing the water 



Study of Motives 27 

into their faces, screams in an ecstasy of hatred 
and detestation : 

" This is Timon's last ; 
Who, stuck and spangled with your flat- 
teries, L. 100. 
Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces 
Your reeking villany." 

The specific feeling which the use of this imagery 
is intended to connote is described in express 
terms by the boy in Henry Y. who had accom- 
panied Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, that graceless 
trio of braggarts and cut-purses, to the Henry V. 
French wars : " I must leave them and ^^^- "• ^^• 
seek some better service : their villany goes against 
my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up." 
The oft-recurring epithet, "unclean mind," evidently 
takes its origin from the same area of experience. 

We must not suppose that all this is merely 
vague metaphor, indicating in a general way the 
dislike which is awakened by every form of immo- 
rality. Apart from sporadic cases, like the aversion 
of Hamlet and the English Tory to marriage with 
the nearest relatives of a deceased husband or wife, 
these unreasoned antipathies are called forth by 
three great classes of actions. The first is weak- 
ness of will in its various forms, as cowardice, lack 
of fortitude, and absence of self-control. These 
inspire contempt. The second includes all that 
can be subsumed under the term treachery, as 
hypocrisy, flattery, and most forms of mendacity. 



28 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

For the emotion appropriate to them we ought to 
restore the old word despisal. Finally there are 
the forms of sensual indulgence such as gluttony, 
drunkenness, and incest. These arouse the emotion 
of disgust. It will be found that in the main 
Shakespeare confines the terms which suggest the 
nauseating to the second and third groups of 
vices. 



CHAPTER II 
TRANSCENDENTALISM 

No careful moralist will pretend that the preced- 
ing study contains a complete enumeration of the 
forces which bring into existence and mould into 
its present form the moral life. However, it in- 
cludes, I believe, all the material relevant to our 
purpose that Shakespeare has supplied. Whether 
the data thus collected are sufficient to serve as 
the foundation of a structure worth the trouble of 
building, it is no part of the present design to in- 
quire. But it should be noted that if the sketch 
just given is substantially correct in the sense that 
no farther additions would necessitate any radical 
modifications in the general theory that it would 
suggest, then its significance lies quite as much in 
what it omits as in what it contains. Looking 
upon the compassion of Gloucester and the glowing 
devotion of Kent, no student of ethical history can 
forget that for a very important school of moralists 
all this display of feeling, while doubtless very 
affecting, is certainly not morality. With Kant, 
for example, the action, to have moral value, 
must be performed solely for the sake of obeying 
the command of reason ; everything else is morally 



30 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

worthless. This does not mean that he condemns 
pity and love as such. He simply asserts that 
since they involve no attitude whether of obedience 
or rebellion to the law of reason, the actions to 
which they lead have no more moral quality than 
eating at the promptings of hunger. 

This view, though familiar enough to the pro- 
fessional moralist, is so remote, I believe, from 
any conception that would spontaneously suggest 
itself to the layman that it appears to call for 
some elucidation. 

The phrase " obedience to reason " may mean a 
variety of things, but for the typical transcen- 
dentalist, like Kant or Fichte, it carries the im- 
agination to a world higher and more satisfying 
than the barren heap of shifting sand upon which 
is cast our present lot. This supersensible world 
is conceived to be fundamentally different from 
our own, and the most orthodox representatives of 
the school never tire of reiterating that an impen- 
etrable veil hides it completely from our eyes as 
long as we dwell upon this humble planet. Never- 
theless, we can assert that it has its own laws like 
every well-ordered state, laws which its members 
unquestioningly and cheerfully obey. Of this mys- 
terious realm we, too, are citizens. For while our 
lower, or sensual, impulses proclaim our kinship 
with the brute, our rational nature can only be 
explained as an emanation from a higher world. 
We, then, are temporary exiles, or better, colonists 
sent out to reclaim certain portions of the material 



Transcendentalism 3 1 

universe from the rule of night and chaos. Being 
citizens of such a commonwealth we are bound to 
obey its laws, not because they are rules for attain- 
ing the most satisfactory life during the few short 
days of our mission here, but simply because they 
are the laws of the fatherland, and disobedience 
reduces man to the level of the animal, the native 
inhabitant of this world. So a Greek, living for a 
time among a barbarian people, might refuse to 
bend the knee before a Persian despot's throne, 
because it is contrary to the custom of his native 
city for a free man to prostrate himself before a 
mere fellow-being. Or he might restrain himself 
in a fit of passion from killing his slave, not from 
any motive of humanity, but solely from a con- 
sideration of the kind of conduct which in his 
far-away home is considered becoming in a Greek 
citizen. In like manner, the sojourner in this 
world must obey the laws of the land to which he 
really belongs, or lose his title to citizenship, with 
the dignity thereto appertaining. The funda- 
mental moral motive is therefore loyalty, born 
of reverence, to the laws of an invisible state. 

Morality thus has primarily and essentially noth- 
ing to do with this transitory life of ours and its 
petty needs and interests. If the course of action 
which the supersensible law commands happens 
to coincide with the demands of mundane welfare, 
or if it turns out to be the fruit into which beauty 
and strength of character naturally ripen, such an 
outcome is treated as a mere matter of chance, or 



32 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

at best a pre-established harmony. On the other 
hand, if this higher law conflicts at any point with 
the requirements of human welfare, the latter has 
not the slightest moral claim. Hence the " Fiat 
justitia, ruat coelum," and Kant's dictum that the 
lie of benevolence is never justifiable. 

Does the transcendentalist announce these doc- 
trines as conclusions that have gradually forced 
themselves upon his mind, the significance of duty 
as a symbol of the supersensuous revealing itself 
only as he slowly delves into the depths of the 
moral consciousness ? Of the ablest and most 
consistent members of the school we can answer, 
no. Kant, for instance, never tires of insisting that 
no one can be called upon to obey a purely un- 
meaning command, and such, he holds, would be 
the moral imperative if the mind knew notliing of 
its origin and import. He accordingly asserts not 
once but many times that the common man in his 
longings for nobility of character places himself 
in thought in an entirely different order of things 
from that of his sensual desires. In thinking of 
himself as the possessor of intrinsic personal worth, 
he becomes clearly conscious of his position as a 
member of a higher world, the world of the pure 
intellect or reason.^ 

Fichte's view is the same in principle, though 
the statements of the master who had never been 
a hundred miles from Konigsberg are somewhat 

1 See Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Hartenstein 
Edition, Vol. IV., p. 302; Abbott's translation, p. 74. 



Transcendentalism 23 

toned down by the more cosmopolitan pupil. For 
Kant " there is no one, not even the most con- 
summate villain, provided only that he is otherwise 
accustomed to the use of reason" (2. e. is not an 
imbecile), that is blind to the transcendental sig- 
nificance of the moral imperative. Fichte, on the 
other liand, teaches that while every normally con- 
stituted individual is possessed of this conscious- 
ness, nevertheless he who habitually yields to his 
lower impulses may gradually become oblivious of 
his higher nature till at length it is notliing more 
to him than the fairy tales of his childhood. " As 
a man's affections are, so is his knowledge," and 
" according to what we ourselves are, do we con- 
ceive of man and his vocation." ^ Furthermore, 
a second cause of moral myopia is admitted in 
the following somewhat enigmatical statement: 
" [Those] who, besides possessing the natural 
proneness to mere sensuous activity which is com- 
mon to us all, have also added to its power by the 
adoption of similar habits of thought . . . can 
raise themselves above it, permanently and com- 
pletely, only by persistent and conclusive thought ; 
otherwise, with the purest moral intentions, they 
would be continually drawn down again by their 
understanding, and their whole being would re- 
main a prolonged and insoluble contradiction." 2 
Taking into account the tone of Fichte's writings 

1 Fichte's Popular Works, translated by Wm. Smith, pp. 319 
and 355. 

2 Opus cit., p. 369. 



34 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

as a whole, we may set this class down as either 
narrow and obtuse, or as obstinate and self-willed, 
or as warped by the longing for forbidden fruit. 
In short, the seer of Jena proclaims that his de- 
scription of the rational world and our relation to it 
represents nothing beyond the most familiar ele- 
ments of the every- day thinking of the average 
man. If you the reader fail to recognize its 
counterpart in your own experience, that fact 
merely proves that you are either mentally defec- 
tive or morally corrupt. 

If we are to believe such doctrines as these, the 
virtues of Shakespeare's characters must be " splen- 
did vices," for no one of them betrays any partici- 
pation in these gorgeous visions. The Countess, 
in All's Well that Ends Well, sends Bertram 
out into the world rich in her blessing and laden 
with good counsel; the Duke of Vienna entrusts 
the reins of government to Angelo in words that 
bring before him a broad and noble ideal of duty ; 
Yolumnia pleads for Rome before her all-conquer- 
ing son ; Brutus debates long before striking down 
the friend whom he loves and for whose death he 
must weep ; Prospero thrusts back the thoughts of 
vengeance that rise in his soul; Hamlet covers 
himself with reproaches for inertness of thought 
and deed in the presence of obligations the most 
sacred that his conscience acknowledges ; Enobar- 
bus wrestles with temptation, falls, and then, over- 
whelmed with remorse, makes the only amends 
still remaining in his power. But the considera- 



Transcendentalism 2S 

tions dwelt upon by each of these, apostate or con- 
fessor, have nothing to do with any celestial order, 
and remain exactly what they are, whether such an 
order exists or not. Says Fichte : " I do not pursue 
the earthly purpose for its own sake alone, or as a 
final aim; but only because my true final aim, 
obedience to the law of conscience, does not present 
itself to me in this world in any other shape than 
as the advancement of this end." ^ If any of 
Shakespeare's characters cherished such a senti- 
ment they were very careful to conceal it. If they 
attributed it to others, they did not act upon their 
convictions. 

But transcendentalism may be stated in a vaguer 
and therefore more plausible form. Still defining 
morality as obedience to reason, and, as before, 
understanding by reason the faculty of apprehend- 
ing supermundane laws, it may be admitted that 
the ultimate source and authority of the command 
are not necessarily apparent to the common mind. 
This is revealed only to the student of Kant. 
What the man on the street knows is merely that 
certain actions are unreasonable and others reason- 
able, and that a being who possesses reason ought 
to obey reason, this knowledge being accompanied 
by a tendency to obedience. Or, if he does not 
formulate it thus, he is conscious at least of an im- 
pulse to do certain things which are not recom- 
mended by any of the motives enumerated in the 

1 Opus cit., p. 374. 



^6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

last chapter, and which de facto have their source 
in the commands of reason. On the whole the 
matter is represented thus in the plays of Schiller, 
notably in Wallenstein, although his account of the 
inner life of his characters is too incomplete and 
vague to be intelligible without the help of his sys- 
tematic writings. Wliile a transcendentalism of 
this stripe is incompatible with the teachings and 
spirit of Kant, it may be actually adopted as a 
modification of his theory. 

Does reason thus defined appear as a motive in 
Shakespeare's works ? In general, the term is 
e. g. 2 Henry there used for the power of apprehend- 
IV. IV. i. 157. ing truth. In its application to conduct, 
it means first the capacity of adjusting means to 
ends, and secondly the capacity of judging cor- 
rectly as to the relative value of different ends. 
The latter is clearly its meaning in the sonnet on 
lust. 

Sonnet 129, "Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
lines 6 & 7. p^st reason hated, as a swallow'd bait." 

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, again, reason 
appears as the power of correctly estimating values. 
Lysander, having under Puck's charm forsaken his 
yesterday's love, is now pursuing the once-despised 
Helena with an urgency and a violence which she 
cannot understand. In answer to the charge of 
mocking her, Lysander replies with the warmth of 
the newly baptized proselyte : 



Transcendentalism 37 

" Content with Hermia ! No ; I do repent 
The tedious minutes I with her have 

spe^it- M. N. D. 
II. ii. 111. 

The will of man is by his reason sway'd ; 
And reason says you are the worthier 
maid." 

The word judgment is frequently used e. g. Hamlet, 
in the same sense. , ^i- '^'^- '^^' 

It is but a short step from reason as the critic of 
values to reason as what may be called prudence, 
that is, the impartial regard for the totality of our 
personal interests. As such it appears in lago's 
disquisition to Roderigo on the power of the will : 
" If the balance of our lives had not otheiio I. 
one scale of reason to poise another of ^- ^'^^^ 
sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures 
would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions : 
but we have reason to cool our raging motions, 
our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts." In the same 
strain Enobarbus, while choosing to follow still 
" the wounded chance of Antony," though others 
are deserting the defeated triumvir, a. & c. in. 
avows " my reason sits in the wind ^- ^6- 
against me." 

There are, it is true, some cases which do not 
fall into any one of the preceding three or four 
categories. But the number is so small as abso- 
lutely to preclude the hypothesis that reason, in the 
sense in which transcendentalism employs it, is a 
factor of any importance in the great moral con- 



3 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

flicts portrayed in Shakespeare's dramas. Quite 
apart from their infrequency, their character is 
such as to afford little aid and comfort to the 
rationalistic theory, as will appear upon subjecting 
them to the slightest examination. 

Returning to reason as the equivalent of pru- 
dence, it will be remembered that its traditional foe 
is that ill-defined group of emotions and impulses 
which goes under the name of the passions. Hence 
it comes about that action determined by reason oc- 
casionally stands for the antithesis of action due 
to the impulsion of passion. Here reason evidently 
means such motives of whatever sort as act with- 
out the assistance of any strong emotion, motives, 
therefore, which are most likely to obtain a hear- 
ing in our calmer hours. An example of this 
usage will be found in Macbeth, Act II., scene iii., 
lines 116, 117 : 

" The expedition of my violent love 
Outrun the pauser, reason." 

Among the motives that are capable of acting 
without the spur of intense feeling must be counted 
altruism, the regard for another's welfare. In at 
least two passages reason seems to be used for 
such an altruism. The first occurs in Julius 
Caesar, where Brutus, dissecting the character of 
Caesar says : 

J. c. " I have not known when his affections 

^- ^- 20. [passions] sway'd 

More than his reason," 



Transcendentalism 39 

The second will be found in the Tempest. Pros- 
pero has his enemies in his power, but overcomes 
the temptation to avenge himself with the thought, 

"Though with their high wrongs I am 

struck to the quick, 
Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my Tempest V. 

fury 
Do I take part." 

It must be confessed, however, that both these 
utterances are somewhat ambiguous. 

Only a single passage now remains to be ex- 
plained. In this the word is used as a generic 
name for the higher faculties of the mind, intellect- 
ual and volitional, as opposed to the sense capacities 
which we possess in common with the brute. 
Hamlet, comparing his own apathy in the presence 
of solemn obligations with the craving for activity 
which has drawn Fortinbras and his Norwegian fol- 
lowers to fight for a straw upon the plains of 
Poland, exclaims in one of his characteristic bursts 
of futile emotion : 

" What is a man, 
If his chief good and market of his time 
Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no 

more. 
Sure, he that made us with such large Hamlet IV. 

discourse, iv. 33. 

Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and god-like reason 
To fust in us unused." 



40 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

That this avowal of enthusiasm for the exercise of 
mental power, and of contempt for the life of sloth 
and sensual indulgence has no necessary connec- 
tion with the speculations of transcendentalism, 
will be clear, I believe, from the preceding chapter. 

Our conclusion can be summarized in a few words. 
The theory that defines morality as obedience to 
reason, where reason means the faculty of appre- 
hending supermundane laws, may be given the 
name of rationalism. Rationalism thus defined is 
as little in consonance with the spirit of Shake- 
speare's plays as is the highly articulated Kantian- 
ism of which it is the pale reflection. 

A third form of transcendentalism remains to 
claim our attention. It finds the source of the moi-al 
life, not in respect for a law, but in loyalty to a law- 
giver. Such a view may, perhaps, be called authori- 
tism. It has been held in somewhat varying forms, 
its most prominent representatives being the so- 
called intuitionists. In examining this doctrine 
we must understand exactly what it affirms. No 
sane man doubts that for many persons the belief 
that God commands veracity, respect for property, 
and much else, is a very powerful factor in secur- 
ing conformity to the requirements of morality ; 
just as is the command of the sovereign and the 
parent, in the state and the family, respectively. 
The real questions in dispute, at least in our own 
day, are these : Is loyalty to God an unanalyzable 
element of consciousness, something, therefore, 
which is irreducible to any motive or combination 



Transcendentalism 41 

of motives as yet shown to exist ? Is it in nature 
and origin absolutely unique, something without a 
parallel among the other constituents of the mental 
life ? Finally, is the loyalty thus conceived the sole 
source of the consciousness of moral distinctions ? 
The student who has answered these questions to 
his own satisfaction has defined his attitude towards 
the common elements of the authoritive theories. 

Of these questions the second can be despatched 
with the most ease. Beyond controversy, in Shake- 
speare's world loyalty to God is not a unique senti- 
ment without a parallel among mundane springs of 
action. At every turn the duty we owe God and 
that which we owe an earthly sovereign are placed 
side by side, as if identical in nature. Everywhere 
loyalty to the heavenly and to the earthly king are 
treated as the same emotion. 

Examples are not far to seek. When Norfolk 
and Bolingbroke are about to meet in mortal com- 
bat on the fateful day for which England was to 
bleed in the War of the Roses, Norfolk, standing 
armed in the lists, cries out in answer to the 
marshal's summons: 

" [I] hither come engaged by my oath — 
Both to defend my loyalty and truth 
To God, my king and my succeeding issue, 
Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me ; 
And, by the grace of God and this mine ]oi(;iia,rd II 

arm, I. iii. 17. 

To prove him, in defending of myself, 
A traitor to my God, my king, and me." 



I.. 179. 



42 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

When King Richard, after forbidding the combat, 
exiles the principals and compels them to swear 
eternal enmity to each other, he summons them to 
take the oath in the following significant language : 

"Lay on our royal sword your banish'd 
hands ; 
Swear by the duty that you owe to God — 
Our part therein we banish with your- 
selves — 
To keep the oath that we administer." 

His meaning is : By your banishment you have 
ceased to be English citizens bound in allegiance 
to me ; there remains, therefore, no anchor for your 
faithfulness to your word except the allegiance you 
owe to the Heavenly King. The identity in nature 
of loyalty to God and king is stated, if possible, still 
more explicitly in a later scene of the same play. 
Again the words are Richard's : , 

" Revolt our subjects ? that we can not 
__ .. ,„„ mend; 

m. u. 100. ' 

They break their faith to God as well as 

us." 

In Richard II., then, we find a representation of 
obligation that brings before the mind a picture of 
a society organized in the spirit of feudalism. At 
the bottom is the serf or retainer, as the case may 
be ; then the over-lord ; then the king ; ascending 
one step higher there is God, in a perfectly literal 
Richard HI. sense " the great King of kings." The 
I. IV. 200. subject owes service to his lord, both 



Transcendentalism 43 

owe service to their common king ; all of these owe 
service to the omnipotent Ruler throned in regions 
inaccessible to sense. Whatever may be the nature 
of the loyalty that prompts the subject to submis- 
sion in each of these relations, it appears to be 
exactly identical throughout the entire range of 
its activity. The treatment of loyalty in the other 
plays, including those of the later periods, is only a 
repetition of the same tale. 

Well, so be it, some one may say, admitted that 
loyalty to God is not different in kind from loyalty 
to the king, is loyalty of any sort reducible to 
motives that we have already studied ? Is it not an 
ultimate, unanalyzable element in human nature ? 
Consider, he may urge, the attitude of the race in 
the presence of authority. Here is one man out of 
the millions who dwell within the limits of the 
fatherland ; his commands are obeyed, while the 
attempt of any one else to exercise such control is 
either met by a contemptuous refusal, or, if neces- 
sary, is repelled by force. Disregarding the influ- 
ence of fear, affection, suggestion, and other 
well-known forces whose existence has never been 
doubted, something still remains to be explained. 
Surely this residual element is without a parallel 
among springs of action, is utterly mysterious and 
even miraculous. 

It might seem as if a discussion of this, the 
fundamental contention of authoritism, were abso- 
lutely precluded by the nature of our materials. 
But unfortunately for him, the Englishman has 



44 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

been driven only too often to reflect upon the 
nature of political obligation. From the day when 
Bolingbroke snatched the crown from the hands 
of Richard II. till the death of Elizabeth, but 
two English monarchs, Henry VIII. and Edward 
VI., ruled with the unquestioning consent of their 
subjects. The others had to defend themselves 
against rival claimants, many of whom had gained 
the allegiance of a powerful faction. Thus the 
thinking Englishman found himself compelled to 
formulate as best he could his reasons for feeling 
constrained to yield a subject's obedience, as the 
only way of determining to whom the obedience 
was due. 

We shall not be surprised when we find these 
moral conflicts mirrored in the pages of Shake- 
speare. For through the greater part of Elizabeth's 
reign her throne rocked on its foundation, and 
was universally considered even more insecure than 
events proved it to be. Her title rested primarily 
upon her legitimate descent from Henry VIII. But 
when we consider the grounds upon which the king 
obtained his first divorce, it becomes obvious that 
either she or her predecessor, Mary, must be a 
usurper, and consequently the partisans of one or 
the other, traitors. No orthodox Roman Catholic 
could admit for an instant the validity of the 
claim of Anne Boleyn to be a lawful wife and 
queen ; and the Protestant, capable of distinguish- 
ing between the use of legal forms by brute force 
and obedience to the spirit that created them, must 



Transcendentalism 45 

have admitted to himself that the position of the 
mother of his sovereign had been in reality little 
better than that of an acknowledged mistress. 
Elizabeth's second title rested upon the will of her 
father; but can a kingdom be disposed of after the 
manner of a second-best bed ? This was a new 
problem, involving a principle so remote from 
previous usage that, by common consent, on the 
accession of James VI., no attention was paid to 
the provisions of that same will, which would have 
given the crown to another branch of the family. 
Lastly, the third title was grounded upon an act of 
Parliament. But can Parliament invest with a 
right to rule one who can urge no other claim ? In 
early English history this question had been an- 
swered in the affirmative more than once. Under 
the Tudors, however, those days were for the most 
part forgotten, and the generation that crowned 
Elizabeth's immediate successor was to see such 
doctrine damned as heresy. 

The intelligent citizen of a modern monarchy 
would base the obligation to obey the command of 
a fellow-man upon the principle that the kingly 
office is a public trust, and the king simply the 
first servant of the state. He looks upon the law 
of hereditary succession as " nothing more than an 
expedient in government founded in wisdom and 
tending to public utility " — to use the words of an 
eminent English judge of the eighteenth century .^ 

1 Sir Michael Foster, in Taswell-Longmead, English Constitu- 
tional History, p. 171, note 5. 



46 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

With him the motive for obedience is, at its best, that 
enthusiasm for the common good which in the in- 
evitable cases of conflict leads to the subordination 
of the individual will. 

At first sight such a man seems to have no 
counterpart in the Shakespearean world. Take, for 
example, the tetralogy that goes by the several names 
of Richard II., first and second Henry IV., and 
Henry V.^ Richard II. is represented, in agreement 
with the testimony of history, as a thoroughly vicious 
and at the same time lamentably weak ruler. None 
of the functions of government was performed prop- 
erly ; life was not safe ; the property of the nobles 
was pillaged, and the merchants were oppressed by 
means of forced loans, blanks, and, according to 
the play, benevolences or " gifts " to the crown. 
In consequence of these things Holinshed, the 
chronicler who supplied Shakespeare with his facts, 
looks upon Richard's deposition as a righteous act, 
and apparently the public utility doctrine would 
permit no other attitude. Yet the best characters 
in the play look upon Bolingbroke's coronation as 
a monstrous crime. The Bishop of CarUsle, a man 
of patriotism and honesty, risks his life in a protest 
flung into the teeth of the newly created king. 
What is more striking the leaders of the rebellion, 
Northumberland and Bolingbroke, admit in after 
years the immorality of their course. True, Nor- 

1 The view that these plays are essentially one need not carry 
with it any implications as to the dates at which the several parts 
were written. 



Transcendentalism 47 

thumberland's confessions of guilt appear as the 
product of his newly conceived hatred for his pres- 
ent master and of a desire for another change. 
Nevertheless his expressions of self-reprobation do 
not sound like mere pretexts ; they seem to repre- 
sent rather the outcome of sober second thought, 
clarified, no doubt, by disillusionment. Surely there 
can be no question of this fact in the case of his 
son, Hotspur. And whatever we may think of the 
Percy family, nothing can have a more genuine 
ring than the dying declaration of Henry IV.: 

" God knows, my son, 
By what by-paths and indirect crook'd 

ways 
I met this crown. 2 Henry IV. 

IV. V. 184 

What in me was purchased ^^•' ^^ *'• 
[i. e., stolen], 
Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort ; 
So thou the garland wear'st successively." 

The effect produced upon the hearer or reader 
by these confessions is heightened through the 
employment of contrast, a favorite device of the 
dramatist. The quarrel between Norfolk and Bol- 
ingbroke, upon which turns the plot of Richard H., 
had its origin in the murder, or alleged murder, 
of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of both Richard 
and Bolingbroke. The agent was Norfolk, but 
behind him was supposed to have stood the king 
himself. One of the earliest scenes of the play 



48 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

represents the good Duke of York, a brother of 
Gloucester, hounded on by the widowed duchess to 
revenge himself upon his royal nephew. The 
old man is far from insensible to her appeal, but 
his loyalty stands firm as a granite cliff. 

" God's is the quarrel ; for God's substitute 
Hath caused his death : the which if 
Richard n. wrongfully, 

■ "■ ' Let heaven revenge ; for I may never 

lift 
An angry arm against His minister." 

Here we may see how the good man acts when 
the criminal that wrongs him is his sovereign. 

And yet there is another side. The noble and 
enlightened Henry V., the ideal man of action, 
though the son of a self-confessed usurper, has no 
scruples about his own title to the throne. He 
knows it will be attacked, and he intends to de- 
fend it. It is only his weak and sentimental son, 
Henry YI., with his double incapacity for seeing 
fact and dealing with fact, that displays any anxiety 
on that score. Furthermore in King John, written 
apparently about the same time as Richard II., we 
find the best intellect and character arrayed on the 
side of the " usurper." 

No one can misunderstand the function of Faul- 
conbridge in this play. He is to be taken as the 
representative Englishman. Keen of insight, sane 
of judgment, noble in heart despite his whimsical 
outbreaks of self-slander, he clearly stands for the 



Transcendentalism 49 

best thought and most scrupulous conscientiousness 
that the times could show. It will be remembered 
that John is represented as basing his claim to the 
crown solely on the pretence that Arthur, the sup- 
posed son of his elder brother, Geffrey, is in 
reality illegitimate. There is no element of histori- 
cal truth in this picture, for England in the thir- 
teenth century was in fact, as in name, an elective 
monarchy. John's title, based on his election by 
Parliament, was consequently all that he could 
desire. Nevertheless, the play, as we have it, 
knows nothing of the Parliamentary prerogative. 
We may gather from certain words that escape 
Faulconbridge in a moment of passion, that he does 
not attach the slightest value to the johniv. 
story of Arthur's illegitimacy. Yet he iii- 142-145. 
never, for an instant, considers joining the French 
army that has been set in motion to restore the 
unfortunate young prince to the throne. On the 
contrary, his loyalty and devotion to his master 
seem as great before Arthur's death as after the 
boy's fatal leap from the castle wall, when, accord- 
ing to the strictest theory of primogeniture, John 
became the rightful sovereign. Just as little is lie 
influenced by the wickedness and misgovernment 
of the king. In the conflict between John and 
the English barons who, after the death of Arthur, 
offered the throne to Louis of France, on the 
ground of John's moral unfitness for the office, 
Faulconbridge is the mainstay of the royal party. 
The solution of these apparent paradoxes is not 



50 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

far to seek. Let us remember that the miseries 
and the anarchy of the reign of Stephen had been 
caused directly by a struggle over a disputed suc- 
cession ; that the French Philip, who was posing 
as the champion of the " legitimate heir," Arthur, 
was at bottom seeking to make England an ap- 
panage to a foreign throne ; let us further re- 

_. ^ , _, member that the Bishop of Carlisle is 
Richard 11. ^ 

IV. i. 136- permitted to see, in prophetic vision, what 
^*^- was still fresh in the minds of Eliza- 

beth's subjects, the disorders of the reign of Henry 
IV., and the horrors of the War of the Roses, an 
enormous price even for deliverance from the 
rule of a profligate tyrant ; let us remember these 
things and we shall see that to side with John 
against the " legitimate heir," and to side with the 
despotic Richard against the stronger, wiser, and, 
in reality, nobler Bolingbroke, might be the policy 
of the same man, one, namely, whose grounds of 
action were throughout a consideration of what 
was likely to be most conducive to the permanent 
welfare of his country. 

The outcome, then, seems to be clear. Shake- 
speare represents civic loyalty, where it is most open- 
eyed and unselfish, as a form of patriotism. And 
the principle of allegiance that is recognized in 
practice by his noblest and most intelligent men 
is one which as formulated by the theorist would 
read : The right to the throne and the right to 
demand obedience when on the throne are neither 
inexplicable nor absolute ; their ultimate source 



Transcendentalism 51 

lies in their relation to the public good. Henry 
V. explicitly acknowledges the validity of this 
principle. When, on the eve of his departure from 
France, he discovers the plot that has been formed 
to kill him, he feels that the wrong done him is in 
a high degree a personal one, for one of the con- 
spirators is his best-loved friend. As a man he 
nevertheless forgives them, and would gladly spare 
their lives. But as one called upon to consider his 
kingdom's safety, he is obliged to overrule his per- 
sonal wishes, and therefore as king, in Henry v. 
the interest of the common weal, he con- ^i- ^- 166- 

181 

demns them to death. 

Should it be urged that the welfare theory of 
sovereignty is, at most, latent in the historical plays, 
and that the language and actions of their char- 
acters are explicable in other ways, the reply can 
be made that in any event the theory is formulated 
with the greatest clearness in one of the maturest 
products of the poet's genius. 

The great play of Coriolanus is not an attack on 
"the people," as is often imagined, for the mis- 
takes and sins of the title hero are far more serious 
than those set down to the account of the Roman 
mob. It is rather a study in the workings of 
political forces. Written at a time when Parlia- 
ment was awakening from its long lethargy and 
was beginning to assert the political rights of the 
people as a whole, the play describes the beginnings 
of the conflict between the Roman aristocracy and 
the masses which, after dragging on for five long 



52 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

centuries, was to end with the establishment of 
Ca3sarism. The last steps in this drama had al- 
ready been traced in Julius Caesar, and Antony 
and Cleopatra. 

At the moment of the opening of Coriolanus the 
people have just won a notable victory. They have 
obtained their first bit of political power in the 
shape of the creation of the tribunate. From first 
to last Coriolanus is the consistent and bitter op- 
ponent of this concession on the part of the patri- 
cians. His reasons are stated with a clearness that 
leaves no room for misunderstanding, a force with 
which no character in the play seems able to cope, 
and a completeness which in another writer would 
have converted the play into a didactic treatise. 
He fears for the consequences of the first grant 
because, extorted as it is by force, he believes it 
„^j. J J will inevitably lead to farther conces- 
221 ff. ; cf. sions. Then when this has grown and 
??■ J' there are two powers in the state, neither 

supreme, he foresees the destruction of 
III. i. passim, good government, then anarchy, and 
127 f£^ finally, enslavement by some foreign 

power. The only safety lies in the rule 
ni. i. ; cf. of a small homogeneous body with unre- 
- ^c^ii« stricted power, wise, provident, and 

lu. 75-137. ^ ' 7 r ' 

capable of leadership. Prom this prin- 
ciple, and from this alone, he deduces the right to 
command and the duty to obey. 

It must be added, however, that distinct traces 
of another mode of thought are occasionallv dis- 



Transcendentalism 53 

coverable. For instance, in Henry V., Act I., we 
find the king of England, together with his legal 
and his moral guides, examining the claims of the 
House of Lancaster to the French throne. The 
point of view throughout seems to be that sover- 
eignty is a piece of property and the king is the 
owner of his people. On this view, if accepted 
without reservation and worked through consist- 
ently, the crown is like any other possession and 
carries with it the right of using and misusing. 
Whatever limitations are placed on these rights 
can be based solely upon a consideration of the 
interests of the heirs. For the subject to refuse 
obedience to a command is a wrong of the same 
nature as if one person should seek to wrest from 
another his land or his slaves. The only casuistical 
questions that can arise with regard to the right 
to rule, are those relating to the conditions of 
succession. 

It is easy to see the facts which lend plausibility 
and indeed a certain justification to this view. The 
kingly office carries with it great emoluments, and 
the opportunity for earning a reward for service 
may be considered a right as much as the undis- 
turbed possession of a piece of property. Do not 
modern law courts seek to protect the manufact- 
urer and the merchant from discriminations that 
would rob them of their customers ? Have not 
the trade unions issued a new commandment: 
" Thou Shalt not take thy neighbor's job " ? That 
in applying the principle to the relation of gov- 



54 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ernor and governed, its restricted validity should 
be frequently overlooked is only what might be 
antecedently expected. This attitude towards sov- 
ereignty, therefore, is but an exaggerated outgrowth 
of loyalty to the institution of property. Of course 
it may be asserted that respect for property, alone 
of all the elements of human life, has its origin 
in motives or faculties inexplicable except by 
reference to a supersensible world. Such an asser- 
tion Shakespeare will not enable us to contradict, 
for he makes no attempt to analyze either the 
institution itself or the nature of its claims to our 
allegiance. As a matter of fact, however, no 
moralist has had the temerity to take such a 
position. 

If, then, God be strictly representable as the 
over-lord of earthly kings, we have a clear picture 
of the relation in which He stands to His subjects. 
First, His motives for asserting and enforcing His 
authority become obvious and intelligible. For if 
Henry V. in his capacity as king denounces murder 
and treachery because they are harmful, there are 
no grounds for supposing that the great King of 
Eichard kings commands, " thou shalt do no 
m. I. iv. murder " for any other reason. Sec- 
200-202. ondly, we can understand the motives 
that prompt Shakespeare's characters to subordi- 
nate their will to the divine commands. Apart 
from fear and love, which are explicitly referred 
to, and the factor of suggestion, which is not 
mentioned, we find the conception, sometimes 



Transcendentalism 55 

formulated, sometimes implied, that God's com- 
mandments represent what best conduces to the 
common good ; perhaps, also, some trace of the 
notion that we are God's possession. The appeal 
made by the former consideration requires nothing 
farther for its explanation than public spirit and 
a desire for one's own sake for security and order. 
The second idea gets its practical effectiveness 
from that respect for property which, that we 
might not be carried beyond our prescribed limits, 
has been left unanalyzed. In view of all these facts, 
loyalty, whether to king or God, can urge no claim 
to be an utterly mysterious and quasi-miraculous 
motive. It has its source in springs of action that 
are well understood ; it has its source in springs 
of action whose origin requires no supernatural 
explanation, except, indeed, in so far as the whole 
nature of man is divine ; it has its source, further- 
more, in springs of action that urge men to assume 
right relations with their fellows quite apart from 
any thought of a supersensible world. 

We have now the answers for the first two ques- 
tions raised by the doctrine of authoritism. The 
third and last, it may be remembered, dealt with 
the relation between loyalty and the consciousness 
of moral distinctions. The contention of the school 
with regard to this relationship may be formulated 
in two statements. First, the apprehension of a 
certain action as right is identical with the con- 
sciousness of an obligation to perform it. Second, 
the consciousness of an obligation to perform an 



^6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

action arises only in consequence of a belief that 
it has been demanded by God. Right and wrong 
being thus meaningless terms, except as the indi- 
vidual turns his face towards his divine King, 
obedience to Him becomes not a part, but the 
whole of morality. Accordingly when we say we 
owe fair dealing or assistance to our neighbor, the 
truth of the matter is that we owe it to Him to 
treat our neighbor in that particular way. In 
other words, the only actions that have moral value 
are those performed from the motive of loyalty 
to God. 

Whatever may be the objective validity of the 
above view it could never have been suggested by 
a study of Shakespeare's characters. In their 
lives loyalty to God appears simply as one of the 
many elements that form the substance of the 
moral life. It does not even claim any sort of pre- 
eminence above the rest. No unprejudiced person 
would pretend that Lear is anything else than a 
representation of the conflict between the powers 
of good and evil — one of the most tremendous 
and awe-inspiring that the imagination of man has 
ever conceived. Yet the attitude of the nobler 
combatants towards crime and moral heroism alike 
is not determined in its essentials by the relation 
in which they suppose themselves to stand to any 
supersensible power. Cordelia, when she hears 
Lear IV. irom Kent's lips the story of her father's 
iii. 31. wrongs, cries out, " Let pity not be 

believed ! " Albany discloses to Goneril his feel- 



Transcendentalism 57 

ings towards her and his opinion of her outrages 
in the words : 

" See thyself, devil ! 
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend IV. ii. 69. 
So horrid as in woman." 

These two utterances taken together represent 
completely the effects of the horrors in the drama 
upon the conscience of those who saw them. Will 
any one have the temerity to assert that in reality 
these men and women had no conscience, that their 
emotions were merely pathological, as Kant would 
call them ? They at all events called the conflict 
raging about them a moral conflict. Their emotions 
of abhorrence or enthusiasm were what they under- 
stood by sympathy for virtue, reprobation for vice. 

" thou good Kent, how shall I live and 

work, IV. vii. 1. 

To match thy goodness? " 

exclaims Cordelia. And when the end has come, 
Albany, now in supreme control, summons to his 
side Edgar and Kent : 

*' You, to your rights; 
With boot, and such addition as your 

honours 
Have more than merited. All friends v. iii. 300. 

shall taste 
The wages of their virtue, and all foes 
The cup of their deservings." 

The German critic Kreyssig has called King Lear 
the drama of Kant's Categorical Imperative. If 



58 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

by this is meant a presentation of the springs of 
moral life, such as transcendentalism in any of its 
forms would recognize, he might as well call 
Paradise Lost the epic of Darwin's Natural 
Selection. 

In this respect King Lear is an epitome of 
Shakespeare's world. Much has been said about 
the absence of religious life in the plays. The 
fact is, the great majority of the leading characters 
exhibit in one way or another a belief in the fun- 
damental postulates of religion. On the other 
hand, their attitude towards God seldom appears 
as a direct factor in determining their relation 
to their fellow-men. This statement is so far 
from holding merely for the criminal and the 
vicious, that its most complete exemplification is 
found in the noblest lives. In fact in the Shake- 
spearean drama but two virtues are habitually 
brought under the special protection of heaven: 
resistance to the temptations of suicide and of 
perjury. The reason for these exceptions is 
obvious : these temptations are oftentimes at once 
so subtle and so overwhelming that considerations 
of humanity and honor tend to crumble before them. 
But even here, if the latter are exceptionally strong, 
the appeal to the supersensible is not needed. 

Consider for a moment the significance of the 
scene at the meeting of the conspirators in Julius 
Caesar. Cassius has demanded that they bind 
themselves together with an oath. To Brutus such 
a proceeding seems a blackening of their own char- 



Transcendentalism 59 

acters. If the evils of the times and shame at our 
fallen estate are not sufficient motives, let us slink, 
every man to his own home, and give up the attempt 
to lead the life of free citizens. But Brutus, you 
object, was an impractical idealist. That is true ; 
but his idealism consisted, so far as this particular 
case is concerned, in judging others by himself. 
How far his confidence would have led him astray 
does not concern us, for we are dealing with the 
ethical question : How explain a Brutus ? not with 
the statistical one : How many Brutuses are there ? 

The last contention of authoritism thus falls to 
the ground. Other actions, we discover, besides 
disobedience to God, are regarded as wrong in 
themselves ; actions performed without any thought 
of obedience may be approved as right. 

This conclusion apparently leaves on our hands a 
serious difficulty. For it will naturally be asked 
how, on such a view, we can explain that feeling 
of restraint which, when it appears amid the stress 
of moral conflict, we call the sense of obligation. 
The logical consequence of the preceding analysis 
is to place the source of the entire moral life in 
desires. But a desire is a mental state whose 
motive power resides in the attraction that is 
exercised by a proposed end. How can constraint 
arise out of attraction ? Whether this problem can 
claim a place in a study like the present will 
depend upon our right to make a certain assump- 
tion. If we may believe that Shakespeare described 
all the elementary phenomena of the moral life, it 



6o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

certainly belongs here ; otherwise not. For the 
consciousness of obligation, in the sense of a feeling 
of restraint, or indeed in any other sense, appears 
neither as a fundamental nor an independent factor 
in any moral experience that he describes ; the 
forces that do battle for the right seem to be, 
without exception, ideas of a state, whether of self 
or another, which the agent desires to bring 
about. We are therefore reduced to two alterna- 
tives. Either an important or perhaps the most im- 
portant constituent of the moral consciousness has 
been ignored, or else we really have before us all 
the fundamentals, and the sense of restraint is but 
a secondary phenomenon which may arise out of 
the conflict of desires. 

Those who accept the latter alternative are 
bound to point out where and under what condi- 
tions this feeling arises. That, in reality, is not 
a difficult task. A desire will give rise to the feel- 
ing of restraint when the actions necessary for its 
realization come into conflict with strong passions, 
deep-seated habits, or are otherwise disagreeable in 
the doing ; when, during the action or even in fac- 
ing the possibility of performing it, we feel as if we 
were acting along the line of the greatest resist- 
ance. In these cases we shrink back and at the 
same time feel ourselves attracted onward. There- 
upon, alike whether we press forward or turn 
aside, a feeling of coercion or restraint will arise, 
and, as long as the opposing forces keep their hold 
upon the attention, will continue. 



Transcendentalism 6i 

An illustration of this principle may be found 
in the tragedy of Hamlet's life. Hamlet possesses 
a certain ideal of character embodied in his friend 
Horatio. Its warp and woof are loyalty and the 
power to pursue one's own way independently alike 
of every stimulus or distraction that fortune hap- 
pens to throw into the way. ( Vide Act IH., scene 
ii., lines 59-79. Note that "just" means loyal.) 
Such loyalty, according to a code that Hamlet 
never questions, demands the revenge of his father's 
murder. Such constancy must he possess if he is 
to attain success. For the stab of a dagger will 
not of itself suffice ; he must so act as to remain 
free from the suspicion of selfish motives in the 
eyes of his mother, his betrothed, and his country- 
men. This involves a carefully thought-out and 
perhaps complicated plan tenaciously followed from 
stage to stage, till his end is finally gained. But 
it is just such a course of which temperament and 
habit have made him incapable. Dependent as he 
is upon stimuli from without for anything more 
exacting than idle reverie, he cannot even set 
his mind to work upon mapping out a coherent 
plan of procedure. Yet all this time an ideal 
of strength and devotion is beckoning him onward. 
Hence it is only with a sense of constraint at 
moments intolerable that he can give himself up 
to the life of aimless floating with the current 
which finally proves his ruin. 

In this way it does not seem difficult to explain 
the feeling of obligation as rooted and grounded 



62 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

in desire or approbation. Whether this or any 
other account of the phenomenon ever entered 
Shakespeare's mind, no one who knows what 
evidence means would pretend to decide. But 
assuming always that his descriptions are correct, 
and at least in outline complete, it appears to be 
the only account compatible with his delineation 
of the moral life. 

Our study in moral dynamics leaves in our hands 
a principle of the greatest practical importance. 
If Shakespeare portrays human life aright, morality 
stands whatever view we may take of the nature 
of the universe or of the origin and ultimate des- 
tiny of man. Let the great heart of things be what 
it will, we recognize a duty to ourselves, our neigh- 
bor, and the general weal, and we have within us 
powers that respond to their call. Metaphysical 
and theological belief may strengthen the moral 
muscle in many ways, but is not its creator. Nor 
in the completely developed man would there be 
anything left for it to do. In fact our study of 
Shakespeare's writings ought to teach us to reverse 
the traditional view on these matters. The nature 
of a man's religion, i. e., his relations with God, 
depends primarily upon his character, though 
interaction is, of course, not excluded. King 
Claudius, for instance, was the pink of orthodoxy, 
and even Falstaff believed — and trembled. But 
the relation of these men to God, in so far as 
He had any place in their lives, was a mere matter 
of buying and selling. Indeed this is the only 



Transcendentalism 63 

attitude toward Him that an ignoble mind can 
take. If, then, the commands of the great King 
are really to exercise moral restraint of a high 
order, there must first exist a spirit of self-forget- 
ting service — " He that loveth not his brother 
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom 
he hath not seen ? " — or failing this, a desire for 
the approbation of a companion mind. Morality 
is thus the creation, not of religious belief, but of 
ideals without which religion itself could arouse 
neither reverence nor moral enthusiasm. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CRITERION OF RIGHT AND WRONG 

In making our way, through this jungle of motives 
I trust we have not forgotten that our aim was to 
discover the sources of the moral judgment. Every 
motive, as was pointed out in the beginning of 
Chapter I., is a ground of approval. Accordingly 
among the sum total of the motives for the best 
actions must be found 'the grounds upon which the 
agent bases his moral approval of such actions. 
Taking the agent as a representative of the race, 
we are thus supplied with valuable material for 
testing the current theories of the moral judgment. 
The clearest and most certain outcome of our 
exploration is a negative one. Conduct is not 
approved, primarily, because it is believed to be 
demanded by a law that comes from a supersen- 
sible order and that has no relation to the welfare 
of human beings in this life. But a positive con- 
clusion seems also warranted. Our analysis of 
human activities has acquainted us with a class of 
forces which can be described as interest in the 
various forms of welfare. And we have found in 
what every one would agree to call the higher 
actions such interests to be the dominant motive. 
We may therefore infer that moral judgments 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 6^ 

have their source in ideals of welfare ; that con- 
duct is an object of moral approbation or disap- 
probation according to the relation in which it 
stands to the well-being of self and others. The 
theory that thus emerges may be called idealism or 
eudsemonism. 

Two easily distinguishable grounds of approval 
have also been discovered. Kent, we remember, 
declares that his motive for interposing between 
Cordelia and the wrath of her father is the latter's 
safety. This evidently signifies that he approves 
the action in question because of its conduciveness 
to an end lying outside of itself, namely, Lear's 
welfare. Accordingly we seem entitled to assert 
the existence of moral judgments in which con- 
duct is pronounced right because a means to wel- 
fare. Such judgments may be called utilitarian. 
On the other hand, the point of view in Volum- 
nia's appeal to Coriolanus to spare his native city 
is of an entirely different nature. 

" Thou hast affected the fine strains of 

honour, 

To imitate the graces of the gods. 

Coriolanus V. 

iii. 149. 

Think' st thou it honourable for a noble 

man 

Still [always] to remember wrongs ? " 

The ground for approving forgiveness of enemies 
is that forgiveness is admirable. Here we seem to 
have a second variety of the moral judgment, in 

5 



66 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

which conduct is pronounced right quite apart 
from any thoughts of its ulterior effects, simply 
because of its own intrinsic excellence. Judg- 
ments based upon admiration for beauty in the 
world of conduct, and immediate antipathy for 
the ugly, the base, and the vile, may be called 
aesthetic. 

Our confidence in the validity of these conclu- 
sions will be strengthened by a study of those 
cases where circumstances have compelled an ex- 
plicit formulation of the reasons for which an 
action is pronounced right or wrong. I pass over 
such scenes as the night in the garden, when 
Brutus justifies the assassination of his best 
friend on the ground that one must 

" Think him as a serpent's egg 
li i 32 Which, hatch' d, would, as his kind, grow 

mischievous." 

No one would care to base a theory on passages of 
this kind, because they are too isolated. Two 
varieties of judgments, however, recur so fre- 
quently in the same form that of their nature and 
significance there can be no reasonable doubt. The 
first of these is the attitude assumed towards pun- 
ishment for crime ; the second, the approval of the 
" forced lie." 

The casuistry of punishment can be disposed 
of in a few words. Isabella, interceding for her 
brother's life, pleads, when argument proves un- 
availing, " Yet show some pity." Angelo replies : 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 67 

" I show it most of all when I show jus- 
tice; 
For then I pity those I do not know, jj" ^ qq 

Which a dismiss'd offence would after 
gall." 

On precisely this ground, with explicit disavowal 
of any other justification, Henry V. condemns to 
death the noblemen who had plotted to Henry v. II. 
kill him. Not the clamors of revenge, "• 174-177. 
not the demands of some abstract conception of 
justice, but the requirements of the public good, 
this it is, in his view, that justifies the state in 
bringing evil upon the evil-doer. 

The principle that right and wrong are deter- 
mined by a consideration of the demands of the 
welfare of those directly and indirectly affected, 
appears likewise in the treatment of veracity. 
Isabella, suing for the life of her brother before 
the deputy Angelo, in the supposed absence of the 
reigning duke, has been offered the boon she begs, 
on condition that she yield herself to his will. 
Never for an instant does she think of consenting, 
and Claudio seems to be lost. But the omniscient 
friar, who later proves to be the duke in disguise, 
evolves a well-contrived plan for the young man's 
rescue. He seeks out Isabella and proposes that 
she appear to yield, and then send in her stead to 
the place assigned Angelo's betrothed, Mariana of 
the moated grange. This unfortunate woman had 
long ago been heartlessly abandoned by the deputy, 
but with the tenacity of her sex she had never 



68 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ceased to love him. " By this," explains the friar, 
" is your brother saved, your honour untainted, 

the poor Mariana advantaged, and the 
ra^°'^263 corrupt deputy scaled. . . . If you think 

well to carry this as you may, the double- 
ness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof." 
There is not a moment's hesitation. " The image 
of it gives me content already," cries Isabella, and 
prepares herself for her part. 

The farther task of unmasking Angelo necessi- 
tates more lies, and here, the stakes not being so 
great, the protests of the antipathetic emotions 
make themselves heard. 

Isabella. To speak so indirectly I am 
loath : 
IV. vi. 1. I would say the truth ; . . . 

. . . Yet I am advised to do it ; 
He says, to veil full purpose. 

Nevertheless, her loathness does not prevent her 
from carrying out to the letter the instructions 
that she has been given. In the presence of the 
duke, who has resumed his state, the dignitaries 
of the city, and the people who have thronged to 
witness the entry of their ruler, she deliberately 
asserts that upon the deputy's demand she allowed 
her sisterly compassion to confute her honor. The 
significance of these scenes lies in the fact that 
Isabella is no weak or compliant mind. She is a 
woman in whom purity of purpose is the funda- 
mental necessity of life; a woman whose con- 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 69 

science is Sro sensitive and withal so powerful that she 
seems to the world " a thing ensky'd and sainted." 
Some persons make a difference between lying 
for their own benefit and that of others; not so 
Shakespeare's characters. Think, for instance, of 
the heroine of All's Well that Ends Well, a char- 
acter superior in beauty even to the statuesque 
Isabella. Fleeing in the guise of a pilgrim from 
France to Italy, in order that the husband who 
hates her may be at liberty to return to his home, 
she reaches Florence as evening is about to fall. 
She finds the people of the city congregated out- 
side the walls watching the triumphal entry of 
their army, just returned from a campaign against 
Siena. Among the crowd is the landlady of an 
inn where pilgrims were wont to lodge. With an 
eye to her professional duties this good woman 
accosts Helena and engages her to remain all 
night at her house. Thereupon the usual shower 
of questions begins : 



Widoiv. 


You came, I think, from France ? 




Helena. 


I did so. 




Widow. 


Here you shall see a countryman 
of yours 






That has done worthy service. 


AU 's WeU 


Helena. 


His name, I pray you. 


m. V. 49. 


Diana. 


The Count Eousillon: know you 
such a one ? 




Helena. 


But by the ear, that hears most 

nobly of him : 
His face I know not. 





yo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Of course Helena could not reveal what that name, 
so idly spoken, meant to her. She could not be 
expected to tell what might lead to the discovery 
that the Count Rousillon was her husband. But 
had she been a stickler for veracity, after Kant's 
own heart, she would either have refused to enter 
upon a course which was, itself, a continuous piece 
of deception, or, if she could succeed in making a 
distinction between the spoken and the acted lie, 
she would have from the first resolved to choose 
silence where the truth would mean the defeat of 
her purpose. To be sure, such a procedure might 
in this case have aroused a curiosity as dangerous 
as a complete avowal ; but then, what of it ? If we, 
as rational beings, are under obligation to make 
our words a reflection of our thoughts, regardless 
of consequences, then must she submit to discovery. 
Helena, however, has other ideas of duty. Too high- 
minded to shuffle or equivocate, she deliberately 
makes a statement that she knows is completely 
false. Like Imogen in Cymbeline, she evidently 
believes 

" If I do lie and do 
Cymbeline ^o harm by it, though the gods hear, I 
IV. ii. 377. hope 

They '11 pardon it." 

Only Helena's conscience demands no excuses. 

In the entire range of Shakespeare's plays there 
is but a single record of a genuine conflict between 
the impulse to speak the truth, at whatever cost, 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 71 

and the desire to dissemble for what, apart from 
the deception, would be recognized as a worthy 
purpose. Coriolanus, having ruined his cause with 
the people by his plainness of speech, is corioianue 
urged by his friends to return to the ^^^- "• 
Forum and disown his insulting epithets. At 
first he cannot bring himself to consent. But the 
ground of his refusal is no more an objection to 
deceit as such, than it is a regard for the social 
value of veracity. It is solely the aversion of 
the proud patrician to the humiliation of bend- 
ing his uncovered head before the despised mob, of 
admitting to himself and to them that he dare not 
say what he pleases. His mother understands him 
perfectly. Determined that he shall yield, her last 
move is to appeal to his love for her, the appeal 
that had never failed. If he will be deaf to that, 

" Come all to ruin ; let 
Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear 
Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at 

death m. u. 125. 

With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list. 
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it 

from me, 
But owe thy pride thyself." 

Coriolanus has within him the spirit of the Spartan 
prisoners who, rather than bear the name of slaves, 
took their lives. Like the mediaeval knight, the 
lie was disgraceful in his eyes primarily, if not 
solely, because the sign of a cowardly spirit. 



72 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Whether the lies of Isabella and Helena were 
really justifiable it would be quite irrelevant to my 
present purpose to inquire. "Wliat I desire to show 
is the manner in which many minds, and those 
often of the purest intentions, deal with the prob- 
lem when it is forced upon them. The preceding 
sketch shows that at least a portion of Shake- 
speare's world, a portion including some of its high- 
est representatives, more or less clearly conceive 
the obligation to veracity as dependent upon the 
needs of social life. 

On the other hand, Shakespeare was, of course, 
well aware that these questions are often decided 
by other criteria, although for some reason, per- 
haps because such modes of judgment did not have 
his sympathy, they do not appear prominently in 
his writings. Nevertheless, traces of them are not 
wholly wanting. Thus as we have seen, the duty 
of the state to requite evil with evil is always based 
upon the requirements of public welfare. In virtue, 
apparently of the same principle, private punish- 
ment is usually condemned. Vengeance, however, 
is occasionally counted a sacred duty, as by Ham- 
let. Similarly with untruthfulness. It is invaria- 
bly excused where it is supposed to be harmless. 
But we are occasionally given brief glimpses of 
another attitude. For instance, when Isabella de- 
clares, "to speak so indirectly I am loath," her 
repugnance does not seem to arise from a compu- 
tation of consequences. 

It is such immediate judgments as these — naively 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 73 

supposed to be common to all men, or at least to 
all good and intelligent men — that have enabled 
non-eudsemonistic theories to assert the absence 
of all essential relation between morality and mun- 
dane good. Intuitionism, which it will be remem- 
bered is a form of transcendentalism, goes still 
farther. It interprets the stirrings of resentment, 
the antipathy to treachery and sensuality, the 
warming of the heart at the spectacle of courage, 
as quasi-miraculous intimations from a supersen- 
sible world, specific directions or commands as to 
the manner in which the citizens of that world 
ought to comport themselves during their enforced 
sojourn in Vanity Fair. But just as our study of 
casuistry has shown that not all good and intelli- 
gent persons regard these " intimations " as ab- 
solutely binding, so our study of motives should 
have taught us that even in those whom they most 
completely dominate they exist in the form of 
ideals. When there is an immediate demand that 
the wicked be punished, it is due to the desire that 
the object of our indignation shall suffer ; when 
there is an unreflective horror of the lie, loyalty to 
truth means purity of character ; when Hamlet 
asks 

" Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to 
suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous Hamlet 

fortune, III. i. 66. 

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them ? " 



74 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

there stands before his inner eye the ideal of a 
strong immovable will. Where a single ideal rules 
in its own field without a rival, what it demands 
will be called right. Where no one is supreme, 
doubt and conflict must arise, and the outcome 
will be determined — whether we are distinctly 
aware of it or not — by our view of the relative 
importance of the interests at stake. Indeed one 
of the most far-reaching shigle explanations of the 
diversity of moral judgments is found in just this 
difference of opinion as to the relative value of in- 
compatible ends. 

The assertion that our actual moral judgments 
are invariably determined by some conception of 
welfare may seem to be audacious in the face of the 
explicit denials of a large body of non-eudasmonis- 
tic writers. Does not the transcendentalist, it will 
be asked, describe the workings of at least his own 
moral consciousness ? Did not Kant and Fichte 
get their moral code from sources absolutely unre- 
lated to their desires and aversions ? The solu- 
tion of this difficulty is found in the difference 
that may exist between what we believe and what 
we believe we believe ; or, as Mr. Bosanquet has 
phrased it,^ between moral ideas and ideas about 
morality. 

Unfortunately for the progress of ethics the gen- 
eral tendency has been for the philosopher to make 

^ International Journal of Ethics, I., 86 ff. Reprinted in Ciri- 
lization of Christendom, p. 178 ff. 



The Criterion of Right and Wrong 75 

his doctrines too exclusively a mere reflection of 
the more salient features of his own moral experi- 
ence, to the neglect of much he might have learned 
from the inner life of his fellow-men. But even 
where self has been the most exclusive object of 
study, an almost incredible divergence between the 
standards actually used and the account offered of 
these standards is demonstrable. Of course this 
assertion cannot be proved here for the more elabo- 
rate doctrines of modern philosophy, but the brief- 
est study of the ethical theories alluded to by 
Shakespeare's characters will show what is possible 
in that direction. 

Of the three or four of these theories the most 
popular is that which defines right as agreement 
with the intentions of nature. Ever since this 
curious doctrine was explicitly formulated by the 
Greek sophist, Hippias, about four hundred years 
before Christ, it has maintained a place in the lan- 
guage and perhaps the thought of men. The 
demand for a " life according to nature " and the 
doctrine of " natural rights " represent merely two 
of its many forms. Among Shakespeare's people the 
theory comes to light in such phrases as t. and c. n. 
" Nature craves all dues be render'd to "• ^'^^^ 
their owners," revenge, " that food which Timon V. 
nature loathes," and in the words with i^- 32. 
which the English ambassador demands from the 
King of France the surrender of his title and his 
lands. The king, he announces, wills 



76 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

" That you divest yourself, and lay apart 
The borrow'd glories that by gift of 

Henry V. heaven, 

II. iv. 77. By law of nature and of nations, 'long 

To him and to his heirs." 

In vain, however, do we seek for an instance in 
which Henry V. or any one else consults the " in- 
tentions of nature " with regard to matters whose 
legitimacy he has no other ground to question. One 
of the most evident intentions of nature is that the 
masculine half of the race should be distinguished 
from the better half by the presence of a beard ; 
but the whim having fastened itself upon the men 
of Europe to assign that function to short hair, we 
shave and have our hair cut in calm indifference to 
what " nature craves." Shakespeare's men seem 
to have felt no more qualms on the subject than 
we do. So far may our formulae for our judg- 
ments be removed from the veritable grounds on 
which they are based. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NATURE OF THE GOOD 

The foundations of the moral world, we have 
learned, are laid in the desire for the welfare of 
self and others. But the term welfare is as vague 
as an aphorism from Meister Eckhart, and the 
moralist is bound to make it more definite. With- 
out some conception of its meaning we could not 
form the simplest decision. Without an exact for- 
mula we may be left stranded at a critical period 
in our career upon the sands of doubt and hesita- 
tion, or we may be driven from our course by the 
blind forces of temperament or swept away by some 
current of education or fashion. Isabella, for in- 
stance, hates a lie ; on the other hand, she de- 
sires her brother's life. Of two goods the world 
has room for but one. Let her choice fall as it 
may, it must assume the truth of some theory of 
values. To be sure, a formula for the good cannot 
by itself serve as a pilot to guide us through the 
intricacies of casuistry, but, supplemented by a 
correct view of the relation that should be main- 
tained between the pursuit of individual good and 
the good of others, it is a chart to tell us in what 
direction our harbor lies. 



78 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

The good (honum) means, of course, that which is 
desirable or worth having. In ethical discussions, 
unless the contrary is expressly stated, it denotes 
that which is desirable not as a means to an end, 
but as an end in itself. Among the prominent 
claimants for the honor of occupying this position 
are pleasure, activity, breadth and variety of experi- 
ence,^ power, the beautiful, knowledge, virtue, and 
the development of our faculties. The first and 
the last are the two most prominent candidates, the 
last under the name of self-realization having been 
for a considerable period the favorite in the most 
exclusive philosophical circles. And if within the 
last few years its popularity has suffered something 
of a decline, it can still, like a retired political 
" sage," count upon the devoted loyalty of a faith- 
ful few and the Platonic veneration of a multitude 
of former worshipers. 

At the very outset of any inquiry into the nature 
of the good a formidable difficulty arises. What 
is meant by the term valuable ? It has often been 
thought sufficient to answer: That is valuable 
which is desired ; that is intrinsically valuable 
which is desired for its own sake. This definition 
cannot be called false, for somewhere within the 
circle of the desired the good must lie. But 
whether it is adequate is quite another matter. 
For reasons which will appear in their place I 

^ Cf. Faust : What all mankind of pain and of enjoyment 

May taste, with them to taste be my e.-nploymeut. 
Faust, part 1, Act II., scene vi. Translation of J. S. Blackie. 



The Nature of the Good 79 

shall not, however, follow up this interesting and 
important question. The majority of the investi- 
gators in this field have contented themselves with 
presenting a formula which they claim will cover 
all the ultimate objects of desire. The limits of 
our subject matter will restrict us to an examina- 
tion of certain of these conclusions. 

If by self-realization is meant the developing 
and perfecting of all our powers and capacities of 
intellect, taste, and will, then after what has been 
said in a previous cliapter no proof is needed that 
it fills a large place as a motive in the lives of the 
broadest and most gifted men. It is true that our 
study was confined to the will. Yet obviously an 
interest in the development of all sides of our 
nature will be the usual accompaniment of a scru- 
pulous care for the perfection of any one of them. 
A Prospero, therefore, who in the world of action 
takes the side of his nobler reason against his 
lower passions will also care supremely for the 
bettering of his mind. And the frequently ex- 
pressed ideal of living above the brutes will be 
found to involve a desire, not merely for emanci- 
pation from the power of blind and transient im- 
pulses, but also for the possession of every capacity, 
intellectual, emotional, and volitional, that dis- 
tinguishes man from the lower animals. 

Whether self-realization is entitled to the rank 
of an ultimate end is a question that we may waive 
for the moment. However the answer may fall, 
we may easily assure ourselves that it is not 



8o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

the only object of desire, even in the highest rep- 
resentatives of the race. This will appear from 
a study of one of the most characteristic features 
of Shakespeare's world, namely the desire for 
fame. 

To the role played by this masterful passion 
reference has already been made.^ We meet it at 
the very beginning of one of the earliest comedies : 

j". J ■ "Fame, that all hunt after in their lives." 

From that time on there is scarcely a play where 
the desire either for fame or its brother, good 
reputation, is not an important factor in the 
working out of the plot. Those to whom it 
T. and c. means most hold it " far more precious- 
V. iii. 27. dear than life," even where life has 
everything to offer. 

The same is true of the closely allied end, good 
reputation. When Bolingbroke, who is one day to 
be crowned Henry lY., charges the Duke of Nor- 
folk with treason in the presence of King Richard 
II., the accused nobleman demands the privilege 
of clearing himself by the arbitrament of battle. 
Richard, knowing that he is the real object of 
Boliugbroke's attack, at first refuses to permit the 
combat. Thereupon Norfolk breaks forth in words 
that may fairly be called the fundamental article 
in the creed of chivalry : 

1 See above p. 15. 



The Nature of the Good 8i 

" The purest treasure mortal times afford 
Is spotless reputation : that away, 
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay. Ricj^ard II 

I. i. 177. 
Mine honour is my life ; both grow in 

one; 
Take honour from me, and my life is 
done." 

To stand well with those about us is here declared 
to be the chief end of man. This language can- 
not be interpreted as merely the exaggeration of 
passion, or as a mask of duplicity assumed to con- 
ceal the features of crime. For what a man is 
appears, if anywhere, in his last hours, and the 
dying thought of some of Shakespeare's noblest 
characters, — Antonio, Brutus, Hamlet, — concerns 
itself with the portrait they are to leave behind 
them in the memory of men. 

The significance for our purposes of this attitude 
towards fame and reputation lies in the fact that 
both are here valued, not as means to some ulterior 
end, but as ends in themselves. First, they do 
not derive their value from any relation to self- 
realization. This is obvious from their very nature. 
Self-realization has to do with what we are, or, if 
you prefer, with the way we appear to ourselves ; 
fame and reputation, with the way we appear to 
others. To confound things so different is to 
widen your definition till self-realization means : 
Whatever I choose to consider a good. 

The independence of these two ends is, further- 



82 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

more, demonstrable by examples. One of the most 
interesting passages to be found in the entire range 
of Shakespeare's works is the controversy between 
the sons of Priam, in Troilus and Cressida. In the 
seventh year of the war, the Greeks offered to de- 
part forever without demanding any indemnity for 
their losses, provided the Trojans would give up 
Helen. The proposition is brought in due form 
before a family council where at first all favor its 
acceptance, save Priam's youngest son, Troilus, 
and naturally enough, his brother Paris. The dis- 
cussion grows heated, Troilus being the centre of 
attack. Finally Hector proceeds to define his 
position for the last time. "The reasons you 
allege," he says in reply to Paris and Troilus, 

" do more conduce 
T. and C. To the hot passion of distemper'd blood 
II. ii. 168. Than to make up a free determination 
'Twixt right and wrong." 

Then follows a solemn assertion of the wickedness 

of detaining Helen, concluding in an elevated 

strain : 

" These moral laws 
Of nature and of nations speak aloud 

L. 184. To have her back return'd : thus to persist 

In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, 
But makes it much more heavy." 

Every one is accordingly prepared to hear Hector 
insist anew upon the acceptance of the Greek 



The Nature of the Good 83 

proposals. Imagine their surprise when in the 
very next breath he continues : 

" Hector's opinion 
Is this in way of truth ; yet ne'ertheless, 
My spritely brethren, I propend to you 
In resolution to keep Helen still, L. 188. 

For 't is a cause that hath no mean de- 

pendance 
Upon our joint and several dignities." 

"What can he mean ? Troilus understands him 
instantly : 

" Why, there you touch'd the life of our design : 
Were it not glory that we more affected 
Than the performance of our heaving spleens, 
I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood 
Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, 
She is a theme of honour and renown, 
A spur to valiant and magnanimous ^ 194 

deeds. 
Whose present courage may beat down our foes. 
And fame in time to come canonize us ; 
For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose 
So rich advantage of a promised glory 
As smiles upon the forehead of this action 
For the wide world's revenue. 

Hect. I am yours, 

You valiant offspring of great Priamus." 

Here, then, is an indubitable instance of a prefer- 
ence for fame before character, and that by men 



84 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

upon whose idealization Shakespeare has lavished 
all the wealth of his powers. 

The theory of values here implied is explicitly 
stated (though according to his custom never 
acted upon) by Hamlet in the soliloquy after his 
Hamlet IV. meeting with the fame-seeking Fortin- 
iv. 46 ff. bras. It is put still more strongly 
in Pericles. In this play the order of dependence 
affirmed by the perfectionist is deliberately re- 
versed, and virtue and wisdom are declared to be 
valuable because they assure their possessor an 
imperishable dwelling-place in the minds of men. 

Cerimon. I hold it ever, 

Virtue and cunning were endowments 
greater 

Pericles Than nobleness and riches : careless 

m. ii. 26. heirs 

May the two latter darken and expend ; 
But immortality attends the former, 
Making a man a god. 

Of course this is merely Cerimon's polite way of 
parrying his friends' praise. Nevertheless, to be 
effective, what he says cannot seem either to 
speaker or hearers utterly absurd. While, there- 
fore, it need not have been taken by any of them 
for the whole truth, it must have seemed valid 
to them as far as it went. In fact, with a little 
care in selecting one's illustrations, a plausible 
argument could be made for the position that 
fame, including, of course, reputation, is re- 



The Nature of the Good 85 

garded in Shakespeare's world as the sole ultimate 
good. 

But if fame is not desired as a means to self- 
realization, just as little is it ordinarily desired 
because of the pleasure its attainment promises 
to afford, A test case is supplied by Cassius, and 
possibly Brutus, who wished for fame after death, 
although they did not look forward to a life 
beyond the grave. Hardly had Coesar fallen under 
the blows of the conspirators, when the thought 
of the leaders, beset though they were on all sides 
by confusion and danger, turned as automatically 
as a deflected needle to the glory promised them by 
their deed. 

Cassius. Stoop, then, and wash. How 

many ages hence 
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over 
In states unborn and accents yet un- 
known! 

Brutus. How many times shall Caesar j. c. m. 

bleed in sport, ^* ^^^• 

That now on Pompey's basis lies along 
No worthier than the dust ! 

Cassius. So oft as that shall be, 

So often shall the knot of us be call'd 
The men that gave their country liberty. 

Yet Cassius was an Epicurean,^ and v.i. 77. 

Brutus seems to have shared with his iv. ui. 

brother Stoics of that day the belief 1*5. 
1 So also in Plutarch. 



86 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

that the consciousness of good and evil ends with 
death. At least, in the farewell between him and 
his friend we find no reference to the possibility 
of a meeting in another world. Evi- 
dently their desire for posthumous fame 
was not aroused by the idea of enjoying its 
realization. 

Mighty as is the desire for fame, it may yield 
in potency to the passion of love. Othello was 
once altogether such a one as Hector ; the free 
active life of the soldier, with its promise of power 
and renown, the preservation of his reputation 
for courage, honor, and leadership, these were 
all in all to him. But the time came when Desde- 
mona became a part of his life. Then in the 
agony of the supposed annihilation of her affection, 
he found he could have endured the wreck of his 
Othello IV. ambition, yes, even the scorn of man, 
ii. 47 ff. better than the loss of love. Why ? 
At all events not because it meant loss of an 
important means of self-realization. The love of 
woman he had never expected, but when Desde- 
mona wept at the story of the dangers he had 
passed, he needs must love her. And when she 
had become his wife, his bliss in possession did 
not arise from the reflection that now a very 
important and hitherto neglected side of his nature 
could obtain its development, that his character 
would become more perfectly rounded and more 
harmonious as time went on through the growth 
of latent capacities. No, it is what he has, not 



The Nature of the Good 87 

what he maj become that fills his soul with 
absolute content. 

" If it were now to die, 
' Twere now to be most happy ; for, I fear, 
My soul hath her content so absolute ii, i.l91. 

That not another comfort like to this 
Succeeds in unknown fate." 

This brief survey seems to me to demonstrate 
the existence of ends which are pursued for their 
own sakes, alike without reference to their power 
of developing faculties, and to the amount of 
pleasure or freedom from pain they promise to 
furnish. In view of the present state of ethical 
controversy, it seems worth while to establish 
this principle for that important end of human 
endeavor, the good of others. 

" What is your will ? That [Lysim- Pericles 
achus] have his." The simple and 
common phenomenon represented in this brief 
dialogue has been the occasion of many an inky 
battle. Taken in their obvious signification its 
words are declared by some to stand for an impos- 
sibility. When I act most " unselfishly " my will 
is really aiming, they imagine, at some state of my- 
self that can be reached only as my neighbor at- 
tains the object of his desire. This state may then 
be described, according to taste, either as sympa- 
thetic pleasure in another's success, or as the 
development of some of my various powers or 
capacities. 



88 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

The first of these hypotheses appears in a well- 
known Lincoln story. " Mr. Lincoln once remarked 
to a fellow-passenger on an old-time mud-coach " 
— so runs one version of the tale — " that all men 
were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His 
fellow-passenger was antagonizing his position, 
when they were passing over a corduroy bridge 
that spanned a slough. As they crossed this 
bridge they espied an old razor-backed sow on the 
bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had 
got into the slough and were in danger of drown- 
ing. As the old coach began to climb the hill Mr. 
Lincoln called out, ' Driver, can't you stop just a 
moment?' Then Mr. Lincoln jumped out, ran 
back, and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and 
water and placed them on the bank. When he 
returned, his companion remarked : ' Now, Abe, 
where does selfishness come in on this little 
episode ? ' ' Why, bless your soul, Ed, that 
was the very essence of selfishness. I should 
have had no peace of mind all day had I gone 
on and left that suffering old sow worrying over 
those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don't 
you see ? ' " i 

That Mr. Lincoln has supplied a correct explana- 
tion of many an action there can be no doubt. 
That the explanation is inadequate to account for 
all the facts is equally certain. Clarence, brother 
of Edward lY. and Richard IIL, warned by a 

1 Quoted from the Springfield (111.) Monitor, in the Outlook, 
Vol. LVI, p. 1059. 



The Nature of the Good 89 

dream that the hour of his death is at hand, cries 
out in agony of soul, 

" God ! if my deep prayers cannot 

appease thee, 
But thou wilt be avenged on my mis- Bichardm. 

deeds, I- i^- 69- 

Yet execute thy wrath in me alone, 
0, spare my guiltless wife and my poor 

children ! " 

His petition is not for ease of mind about his 
family, but for his family. He is as far from 
begging to be assured of their welfare as he is 
from begging to be allowed to witness it. The 
direct object of his desire is their good. In fact, 
the Lincoln paradox is susceptible of a very simple 
explanation. Unsatisfied desire may become the 
object of a secondary desire, the desire to be rid of 
the desiring state. But obviously the secondary 
desire is made possible by the existence of a 
primary desire with a different object. 

According to the second of the above mentioned 
hypotheses, when I am making a sacrifice for the 
benefit of another — as the untutored mind naively 
calls it — I am in reality interested solely in devel- 
oping my own courage, my power of enduring pain 
or privation, my sympathies, or some such thing. 
To put it plainly and without circumlocution, I am 
merely using my fellow men as material on which 
to work up my emotional and volitional muscle, a 
sort of moral Swedish horse or flying trapeze. A 



go Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

man like Kent becomes in this view an excep- 
tionally determined athlete, bearing the same rela- 
tion to the average mortal that the climber of 
Alpine peaks does to the business man who gets 
all the exercise he wants by walking to and from 
his street-car. This theory is ruled out of court, 
if put forward as an all-suJEiicient description of 
altruistic action, in case we can find an instance 
of a desire for the good of those whose welfare we 
cannot affect by our actions, and who therefore 
make no demand upon the exercise of our faculties. 
The scene just cited supplies such an instance. 
When a man who is looking death in the face 
prays, " 0, spare my guiltless wife and my poor 
children ! " he is begging for that which can never 
affect the state of his moral muscle, one way or the 
other. 

If we may affirm that neither pleasure nor self- 
realization is the sole object of desire, we must 
assert with equal emphasis that neither can be ex- 
cluded from the category of the desired. For self- 
realization Shakespeare hardly affords us the test 
case we might expect to have ; but surely we are 
entitled to infer that if a man may desire for its 
own sake to present a certain appearance to others, 
he may desire in an exactly similar manner to 
present that same appearance to himself; or, in 
other words, if he may desire to seem, he may 
desire to be. 

With regard to pleasure the facts are really 
beyond controversy. The claims of psychological 



The Nature of the Good 91 

hedonism have indeed been met by the counter- 
claim that pleasure is never a direct object of 
desire nor pain of aversion. But this statement is 
simply an illustration of the principle that narrow- 
ness enkindles narrowness. No one, of course, ever 
desires " mere pleasure," for there is no such thing. 
But to say we desire pleasure means that we 
desire a state because and in so far as it promises 
to be pleasant. Evidence that this is possible for 
aversion from pain seems to be afforded by Othello's 
last words to Desdemona : 

" Not dead ? not yet quite dead ? 
I that am cruel am yet merciful ; Othello V. 

I would not have thee linger in thy ii- 86. 
pain." 

There may be those who imagine that Othello is 
merely afraid his mercifulness will lose something 
of its delicacy if he is not careful to prevent un- 
necessary suffering. But I venture to affirm that 
for the spectator not mad with too much learning 
the tragic power of these brief lines lies in the 
assumption that at the last supreme moment 
Othello desires the good of her he still must love, 
and that he does not regard a prolongation of the 
death agony by a few minutes or even seconds too 
trifling a matter to be worthy of consideration. 

That the aversion to certain emotional states 
may be due to their painfulness is exhibited in the 
plays with even greater clearness. Constance, the 
widow of King John's older brother, has just lost 



92 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

her only son, and is racked with the agony of a 
desolated mother. Doubtless she would not be 
free from her grief at the price of less sensitive- 
ness ; that would conflict with an ideal of mother- 
hood which she could not cast away. But if she 
could be free without lowering herself in her own 
eyes how gladly would she welcome the change. 

"I am not mad: I would to heaven I 
were ! 
For then, ' tis like I should forget 
myself : 
King John O, if I could, what grief should I 
m. iv. 48. forget ! 

Preach some philosophy to make me 

mad, 
And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal." 

Shakespeare wrote this as a young man. But 
in the maturity of his powers he portrays a similar 
situation met in the same spirit. The speaker is 
the blind Gloucester. 

"The king is mad: how stiff is my vile 
sense, 
That I stand up, and have ingenious 
feeling 
Lear IV. Of my huge sorrows ! Better I were 

Ti- 286. distract: 

So should my thoughts be sever'd from 

my griefs, 
And woes by wrong imaginations lose 
The knowledge of themselves." 



The Nature of the Good 93 

The conclusion to be derived from the foregoing 

_ analysis is that if good be defined as the object of 

desire Shakespeare represents a world in which no 

one formula can be made to cover the content of 

the idea. Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, risks all 

for glory ; to another man reputation is a bubble. 

Desdemona would not have been such a woman as 

Othello thinks her for all the world ; Emilia, on 

: the other hand, while she would not choose such a 

course for a small matter like a ring, is certain she 

would do it for the world, and she knows many 

women like herself. Kent thinks that death has 

■ been kind to Lear : 

" He hates him much 
" That would upon the rack of this tough lear V. iii. 
world ^^3- 

Stretch him out longer." 

Not so, the thorough-going perfectionist would say. 
Lear is now restored in mind. Though feeble in 
body, with, at most, but a few years of life before 
him, he has still unrealized powers and capacities 
which are capable of development. That he has 
not altogether stiffened into the immobility of age 
is shown by the fact that, in the few weeks of 
mingled passion and madness since his abdication, 
the old king has become a different man. When 
the storm has cleared we find a new light has 
dawned upon his soul, a light that the sun of pros- 
perity could never throw. Hence he has still 
everything to live for. True, death has robbed 



94 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

him of his one remaining joy. Drearily, hence- | 
forward, will his days drag themselves toward 
the inevitable end. But pleasure and pain are 
matters of no importance. Moreover, Cordelia's 
death, under the circumstances in which it took 
place, may be expected to bring out new and in- 
teresting phases of his character. He hates him 
much that would see his journey towards perfec- 
tion shortened by a single step. 

Whose judgment of values is correct ? Or is 
there no standard that applies to all men ? Is my 
good simply that which I desire ; and when choice is 
necessary, is the better that which I desire more ? 
We remember Hamlet's answer to this question. 
Hamlet finds Denmark a prison ; Rosencrantz 
finds it otherwise. 

/ Hamlet. Why, then, 't is none to you ; 



Hamlet n. 

but thinking makes it so. 



.. „._ for there is nothing either good or bad,* 



But Shakespeare, who can speak against the 
thing he says, gives us another view in a pas- 
sage that may have been written about the same 
time. During the controversy between the 
sons of Priam already referred to, the youth- 
ful Troilus ventures the same paradox about a 
woman : 

T. ^^C. n. ,, y^^^^ .g ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ,^ .g ^^YyxQdi ? " 
1 Not " right or wrong," as this is often understood to mean. 



The Nature of the Good 95 

To this Hector at once replies : 

" But value dwells not in particular will ; 
It holds his estimate and dignity 
As well wherein 't is precious of itself 
As in the prizer." 

In other words, a man's own preferences are not 
necessarily the sole ultimate standard in determin- 
ing his good. 

Which of the foregoing statements is correct is 
obviously a problem upon the solution of which all 
subsequent investigation into the content of the good 
must depend. Material bearing directly upon it is 
not, I think, offered by Shakespeare ; those phases 
of the mental life that alone could supply the 
necessary data, he has not cared to represent. 
While our results are thus in the main negative, 
they are not, I trust, for that reason profitless. 
We have discovered that those psychologists and 
moralists are in error who describe the will as 
always directed to a single goal ; and we have dis- 
covered that, contrary to the assertion of various 
writers, perfection, pleasure, and the good of others, 
as well as much else, may become the direct object 
of desire. These doctrines are not merely of im- 
portance in themselves, they derive an added sig- 
nificance from the fact that they represent the 
only results of the long controversy about the 
honum that can lay any claim to the dignity of es- 
tablished truths. For they alone, amidst the clash 
of contending opinions, have been able to secure 



g6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

the allegiance of an ever-increasing proportion of 
the best contemporary authorities. They may 
therefore be looked upon as the foundation for all 
that the future will accomplish in this field of in- 
vestigation. 



CHAPTER V 
CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSCIENCELESS 

If the great master of those who know human life 
has succeeded in describing adequately the conflict 
within the will between the better and the worse, 
he has supplied the data for defining the funda- 
mental word in the ethical vocabulary. Accord- 
ing to certain moralists, as we have seen, conscience 
is a mystic oracle within the breast through which 
are transmitted to this lower world the laws of a 
supersensible commonwealth. According to others, 
conscience cannot be a separate faculty, function- 
ing by itself in some corner of the mind ; it is the 
mind as a whole regarded as the source of moral 
judgments. It is in the latter way, if our previous 
conclusions are warranted, that the matter should 
be described by Shakespeare. Whether he does 
in fact so describe it may be determined by study- 
ing a typical representation of the revival of moral 
sensibility. 

The scene is laid in the chamber of Queen Ger- 
trude, in the castle of Elsinore. Behind the arras 
lies the slain Polonius. Turning away with un- 
concern from the deed his hand has just committed, 
Hamlet addresses himself to his trembling mother : 

7 



98 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

"Leave wringing of your hands: peace! 
sit you down, 
Hamlet IH. j^^^ jg^ ^q wring your heart ; for so I 
shall, 
If it be made of penetrable stuff." 

Before them on the arras stands the figure of the 
murdered king ; next to him the man that robbed 
him of place, of love, of life. 

"Look here, upon this picture, and on 
this, 

The counterfeit presentment of two 
brothers. 

See, what a grace was seated on this brow ; 

Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove him- 
self; 

An eye like Mars, to threaten and com- 
mand ; 
L. 68. A station like the herald Mercury 

New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 

A combination and a form indeed. 

Where every god did seem to set his seal, 

To give the world assurance of a man : 

This was your husband. Look you now, 
what follows : 

Here is your husband ; like a mildew'd 
ear. 

Blasting his wholesome brother." 

How could she turn away from one so noble ? How 
could she forget solemnly contracted vows to throw 
herself into the arms of " a murderer and a villain ; 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 99 

a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of [her] 
precedent lord ? " He finds but one answer : the 
capriciousness of lust. This it is that made her 
fall a prey to the guilty advances of her husband's 
brother; that drove from her mind the image of 
her former lord before he was laid in the grave ; 
that sealed her eyes to the murder of her husband 
and hurried her into an incestuous union with the 
murderer. Licentiousness, shallowness of heart, 
disloyalty to the dead, incest, this is the count. 
As black on black the picture is painted before her 
eyes, the better impulses of that fallen nature are 
quickened into life and the power returns to see 
herself as she is. " Hamlet, speak no more," 
she cries in the agony of self-recognition, 

" Thou turns't mine eyes into my very soul ; 

And there I see such black and grained 

L. 88. 

spots 

As will not leave their tinct." 

Love and pity, sorrow and shame at the downfall 
of her nobler self, loathing for the self that now 
dwells in its place, these Hamlet has aroused. If 
the scene is meant to represent the awakening of 
conscience, these are conscience. 

But if, when the situation demands the sacrifice 
of some personal interest, there be neither altruism 
in its heaven-directed or earth-directed form, nor 
desire for perfection of character, nor direct abhor- 
rence of vice, to what can we appeal ? Nothing. 
We may, of course, use bribery or threats ; but the 

L.ofC. 



lOO Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

result is not genuine morality. The man is con- 
scienceless, whatever he does or refrains from 
doing. He feels no scruples about the proposed 
crime and no real remorse for it when past. Shake- 
speare has not hesitated to draw several such char- 
acters. If we disregard Aaron, in Titus Andronicus, 
on the ground of disputed authorship, his first 
essay in this direction was Richard 111.^ 

To descant upon the crimes of this intrepid vil- 
lain were to harp upon a hackneyed theme. As 
every one admits, no traces of moral principle can 
be discovered in his career as represented in the 
main body of the drama. In cold blood he plans 
and perpetrates a series of revolting murders, and 
feels nothing but satisfaction in his success. But 
in his last hours, it is often held, this moral indif- 
ference disappears. When, on the eve of the battle 
of Bosworth Field, he is warned by voices whose 
prophetic nature he cannot doubt that his life is 
at an end, and when on the black curtain of the 
night the vision of the past is thrown, scene after 
scene, then what he calls conscience rises to afflict 
him. He awakes in terror, while cold fearful drops 
stand on his trembling flesh. 

What are the thoughts that oppress and terrify 
his soul ? It is easy to discover, for to the unbiased 
observer they are unequivocally revealed. Listen 
to the cry with which he awakes : 

1 The Shakespearean authorship of Richard III. has been de- 
nied by James Russell Lowell, but, it would appear, on insufficient 
evidence. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless loi 

" Give me another horse : bind up my 
wounds. 
Have mercy, Jesu ! — Soft ! I did but 

^^'^^™- Kichard HI. 

Methought the souls of all that I had v. iii. 177, 
murder'd 178,204-206. 

Came to my tent; and every one did 

threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of 

Richard." 

From the priest's lips he had often heard that 

" The great King of kings 

Hath in the tables of his law commanded , . ^„ 

L. IV. 200. 
That thou shalt do no murder." 

That God " holds vengeance in His hands," was a 
fundamental tenet of his church. Why 

L. 204. 

should he doubt it? There is no evi- 
dence that he was a skeptic. In the presence of his 
generals he could, indeed, scoff at the thought of 
future retribution : 

"Let not our babbling dreams affright our 

souls : 
Conscience is but a word that cowards 

use, 
Devised at first to keep the strong in ' ' ' 

awe: 
Our strong arms be our conscience, 

swords our law." 

But manifestly he is here whistling to keep up his 
own and his followers' courage. Can he for a mo- 



I02 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ment imagine that God will fail to keep His word ? 
Does he not know that Richard, King of England, 
has never permitted the slightest act of disobedi- 
ence to his commands to go unpmiished ? So with 
all his bravado he cannot help believing these mid- 
night apparitions to be messengers of divine wrath. 
For belief in dreams was an unquestioned element 
in the creed of the time, and what these dreams an- 
nounced was a punishment that he knew was inevi- 
table, sooner or later. In the heyday of life he 
could forget the threatening vengeance, but now it 
is immediately upon him ; the vengeance is to- 
morrow's, and vengeance means not merely defeat 
and failure, but death and hell. Well may he start 
in terror, though no coward. But in all this there 
is no trace of self-condemnation ; only fear. 

„ ... ,-« "0 coward conscience, how dost thou 
V. m. 179. 

afflict me!" 

« Ratcliff, I fear, I fear, — 

Bat. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of 

shadows. 
K. Rich. By the apostle Paul, shadows 

to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of 

Richard 
Than can the substance' of ten thousand 

soldiers 
Armfed in proof, and led by shallow 

Richmond." 

Such fear by itself means no more than that frail 
mortality believes itself in the hands of Omnipo- 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 103 

tence, enraged because for the moment its will has 
been blocked. 

But the text as handed down to us contains other 
matter. 

" What do I fear ? myself ? there 's none 
else by : 

Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. 

Is there a murderer here ? No. Yes, I 
am: 

Then fly. What, from myself ? Great 

reason why : L. 182. 

Lest I revenge. What, myself upon my- 
self? 

Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for 
any good 

That I myself have done unto myself ? 

0, no ! alas, I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by my- 
self!" 

and so forth, for nine more dreary lines. What 
are we to make of such words ? Is Shakespeare 
representing this cold-blooded monster as feeling 
genuine remorse for crime ? Can he be supposed 
to hate himself ? Does he intend we shall believe 
Richard was oppressed with a consciousness of 
guilt ? 

The answer to this question involves a problem 
of textual criticism. " Some parts of [this solilo- 
quy]," says Hudson^ "are in or near the poet's 

1 Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters, Vol. II., p. 
168. 



I04 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

best style, others in his worst. . . . [The latter are] 
made up of forced conceits and affectations, such 
as nature utterly refuses to own. ... It is hard to 
believe that Shakespeare could have written [them] 
at any time of his life, or that the speaker, was 
meant to be in earnest in twisting such riddles ; but 
he was. Some have, indeed, claimed to see a reason 
for the thing in the speaker's state of mind ; but this 
view is to my thinking quite upset by the better 
parts of the same speech." Now it is noticeable 
that just those lines of the monologue that are 
assthetically painful are ethically perplexing. "We 
have, therefore, our choice between two hypotheses. 
Either Shakespeare, like Coleridge, in that mon- 
strosity known as Remorse, supposed that sorrow 
for a misspent life, horror of crime, and self-loath- 
ing, can arise in a nature that possesses neither 
sympathy, honor, nor antipathy for treachery ; or 
— the second alternative — some one to us un- 
known, thinking this representation of the guilty 
sinner on the eve of death was not sufficiently ac- 
curate, or edifying, or blood-curdling, attempted to 
improve upon Shakespeare's art by supplementing 
his deficiencies. 

The latter hypothesis is far from gratuitous. 
"It seems almost certain," says Karl Elze^ "that 
[Shakespeare's own manuscripts] never were in 
a printer's hands, except the manuscript of his 
Venus and Adonis and his Lucrece which he pub- 

1 William Shakespeare. English Translation, by L. Dora 
Schmitz, p 296. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 105 

lislied himself." For this reason and many other 
equally good ones, textual critics are generally 
agreed that no one of the plays has come down to us 
exactly as it was written. If with these facts in 
mind we compare the lines in question with others 
that are undoubted interpolations, as Measure for 
Measure, Act III., scene ii., lines 275-296, and 
King Lear, Act III., scene ii., lines 80-95, we 
shall recognize them as the productions of kindred 
souls. Accordingly the choice seems an easy one. 
The passage is not from Shakespeare's hand. 

But if, soaked with a priori ideas of what the 
criminal ought to feel, we reject this conclusion ; 
if we think it more likely that the youthful Shake- 
speare wrote doggerel than that he represented 
a villain living and dying without remorse, we 
may turn to the studies in crime of the maturer 
man, the man who in the days of the great trage- 
dies had attained the fulness of his mental stature. 
The conclusions derivable from an analysis of the 
characters of Goneril and lago depend upon no 
excision of doubtful passages, upon no interpreta- 
tions that may be forced upon single words or 
isolated sentences. 

It has been said even by keen critics that Goneril 
and her sister Regan are exactly alike ; " alike as 
two crabs," says the keenest critic of the guild. 
But nature never turns out two figures from the 
same model, and Shakespeare is nature. Regan 
has the tongue of a shrew ; moreover, she appears 
only too ready in carrying out the suggestions of 



io6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

her older sister. But in judging her it must be 
remembered that both women acted with reference 
to their father under the greatest provocation.^ If 
all the circumstances are studied carefully and 
without prejudice, it will be found that Regan, while 
indeed a woman of cold, selfish, and vindictive 
nature, stands no lower in the moral scale than 
hundreds of respectable people ; and a number of 
indications strewn through the text make it appear 
that at her worst she is rather driven to evil deeds 
by awe of her strong-minded sister than drawn by 
the spontaneous promptings of an actively cruel 
nature. At all events, it is from Goneril that sug- 
gestions of novelties in cruelty invariably come. 
She it is that first disquantities her father's train. 
She it is that forestalls any attempt to recall the 
old king, as he rushes out into the darkness, by her 
cold-blooded sentence : 

" 'T is his own blame ; hath put himself 
Lear II. iv. n . 

2QQ from rest, 

And must needs taste his folly." 

Under Lear's curses his second daughter winces ; 
but Goneril merely laughs in derision at his terri- 
ble maledictions as the drivelling of a dotard. 

But the difference between the sisters goes much 
deeper. Regan is free from treachery even to the 
point of unsuspiciousness ; it is not her part to 
press the poisoned cup to the lips of one by whose 
death she will profit. But Goneril, aspiring to the 

1 See Barrett Wendell, William Shakespeare, p. 296 fE. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 107 

throne of an undivided England in company with 
Edmund, is capable of destroying every life that 
stands between her and her goal. Her sister we 
behold stricken by her potation ; her husband was 
to fall a victim to the same fate ; her brother-in- 
law must have been within the scope of her mur- 
derous plans, if we may judge from the way in which 
the news of his death is received ; it was her writ, 
as well as Edmund's, that was upon the life of Lear 
and of Cordelia. Nor was this, as we may infer, 
the first attempt she had made to kill her father. 
Before even the slight excuse that he had harbored 
with her enemies was offered her, she had sought 
to disencumber herself of him. We learn from 
Gloucester that at the time Lear sought refuge 
with Regan there was " a plot of death 
upon him." We cannot with justice 
suspect the second sister, for she seems to be speak- 
ing in good faith when she says she will take care 
of her father gladly, provided he will dismiss his 
retinue. On the other hand, circumstantial evi- 
dence, which the careful reader will not fail to 
notice, points directly to Goneril as the guilty party. 
It is even possible that she had formed her resolu- 
tion upon the very day on which the old king an- 
nounced his purpose to lay down his authority. 
For her first words to Regan, after the partition of 
the kingdom, are dark hints about important plans 
concerning Lear, plans not to be thought about, 
but to be acted upon and " i' the heat." 

But, after all, the exact time at which Goneril 



io8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

became, in intention, a parricide is of minor con- 
sequence. She is in any event a monster, whereas 
Regan is no more than a heartless and undutiful 
woman. It is the older sister, therefore, that 
stands as the incarnation of brazen-faced iniquity 
in its most aggressive and shameless form. 

What, then, will this ruthless creature do when 
her husband loads her with reproaches for her in- 
humanity and want of natural affection ? Will she 
awake to a sense of the enormity of her offences ? 
Will she melt with contrition ? It might have been 
if within her breast there had dwelt some rudiments 
of a better nature. On the eve of the commission 
of a great crime many a perverted will finds resolu- 
tion stayed by the presence of an enemy within the 
gates. But of Goneril's kingdom no such insurrec- 
tion is recorded ; for the historian, looking into her 
soul, found there no rebel armed against the gov- 
erning power. Hence, when she is confronted with 
the awful picture of her inner life, she feels no 
sorrow, no remorse, because she lacks the pre- 
conditions. The rather, by that instinct of self- 
preservation which dwells alike in our best and 
worst impulses, rage and contempt arise. Re- 
proach is met by recrimination, and Albany is 
scored as a milksop, a coward, a moral- 
ly, u. 50-59, izing fool. Later, in the very moment 
Cf. Fencles ' j 

IV. iii. when her sister is dying with poison 

that she has administered, and her plot 
to kill her husband lies open to the light of day, she 
still breathes defiance as in the time of her strength ; 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 109 
and with the words on her lips, " The _ ... ,^- 

'■ V. 111. 100. 

laws are mine, not thine : who can ar- 
raign me for 't ? " this unbending spirit goes forth 
to meet death. 

Yet even in this woman there still slumbers a 
germ of the moral life. When Edmund, whom she 
loves, lies dying before her, she suspects double 
dealing, and at once raises the cry of treachery, the 
cry, that is, of wrong, not merely of in- 
jury. Inasmuch as her own sister is ' * ' 
at that moment dying of the poison which she had 
herself mixed, such a complaint may seem the very 
acme of absurdity. That it is in the highest degree 
inconsistent is evident ; hardly less so that it is 
supremely human. The principle is illustrated 
over and over again in the historical plays, and 
while every one is familiar with its less exaggerated 
manifestations, experience will show that there are 
no limits to its application. Goneril, then, pos- 
sesses just sufficient conscience to be roused to 
moral indignation for a passing instant, when she 
believes a cruel injury has been done her and the 
man she loves, although she has not enough to feel 
the lightest touches of self-condemnation for the 
crimes by which she herself is to profit. 

It is to lago, then, that we must turn for Shake- 
speare's sole representative, in his later period, of 
the absolutely conscienceless being. With the 
moral vocabulary lago is, indeed, well acquainted. 
By observation he has learned what others admire 
and hate. Hence, he can use terms expressive of 



no Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

praise and blame with perfect propriety. Such 
actions as his, he knows, people call the blackest 
sins; himself they would call a devil. We may 
accordingly overhear him saying, with admirable 
perspicuity : 

" When devils will the blackest sins put 
on, 
Othello II. They do suggest at first with heavenly 
iii. 357. shows, 

As I do now." 

But let no one be deceived by these linguistic 
attainments. 

Students of criminal psychology have noticed 
that most criminals employ euphemistic terms in 
speaking of their misdeeds. In the language of 
the German vagabond, thieving is business {G-e- 
schdft). The French burglar and murderer, Lace- 
naire, used the same word in seeking to obtain an 
accomplice in his friend Avril : " We ought to go 
into business together," he urged — " nous devons 
mSler ensemble notre Industrie." ^ In the thieves' 
Henry V j^^'go^ ^f England, according to the boy 
III. ii. 44. in Henry V., stealing was " purchase." 
jyigj^ From Pistol we learn it was also styled 

Wives I. " convey." This characteristic of hu- 

iii 33 

man nature — for it is not confined to 
those who come into conflict with the police — has 
sometimes occasioned much amusement among the 
thoughtless. But, as a matter of fact, the man who 

1 Despine, Psychologie naturelle, Vol. II., p. 433. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 1 1 1 

in the very act of committing a crime can look 
upon his deed with unaverted eyes, has reached the 
last stage of moral insensibility. For him who 
palters with himself there is always some hope ; 
for the clear-seeing criminal, never. Accordingly, 
when an immoral man applies to his own conduct 
the adjectives by which the race express their 
admirations and loathings, he demonstrates either 
complete atrophy of conscience, or a weak will, which 
knows and approves the better, and struggles, 
though in vain, against overmastering temptations. 
It is to the former class that lago belongs. Like 
Richard III., he can face the truth be- 
cause insensible of its meaning. What i]^^^'^!^' 
feats of objectivity were possible to him Richard 
is shown by a significant passage at the oQ^'g^ ^' 
beginning of the fifth act. Having de- 
cided that Cassio must die — a point apparently 
not included in the original draft of his plan — he 
is reviewing after his characteristic fashion the 
grounds for his decision. Among them he finds 
this : 

" [Cassio] hath a daily beauty in his life othello V. 
That makes me ugly." i- 19. 

lago has discovered that people admire Cassio 
more than him, notwithstanding his "honesty" 
and desire to be useful. Such a state of affairs 
may be prejudicial to his interests. Indeed it had 
already proved so, for it had doubtless helped to 



112 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

bring about the promotion of the " bookish theoric " 
to the position he himself coveted. And certainly 
it had led to the selection of the same theorist in 
preference to the practical ancient as Othello's con- 
fidant in his love affairs. For this reason, then, 
Cassio must be thrust out of the way. But instead 
of saying to himself, as a better man would have 
done : Cassio must be killed, because people admire 
him more than me, he states his grounds with 
almost incredible coolness in purely objective 
terms : Cassio's character is more admirable than 
mine. Such an utterance would have been practi- 
cally impossible had not these words been to him 
as are the names of colors to one born blind, who 
has mastered the science of optics. 

Some critics have found it possible, however, to 
endow lago with the rudiments of a conscience, 
because of a peculiarity in the accounts he gives 
himself of his own motives. As is well known, 
the utterances of the monologues in which these 
revelations appear are confused and at times con- 
tradictory. The facts themselves, nevertheless, 
seem perfectly clear. He desires Roderigo's 
money, Cassio's place ; possibly, too, the satisfaction 
of avenging himself upon Othello for preferring a 
book-crammed student to a man of affairs like 
himself, and for being the (innocent) occasion of 
false reports about his wife's infidelity. Though 
with regard to this matter of revenge, we may be 
sure that it would never have been allowed to inter- 
fere with what he considered his profit ; while the 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 113 

fact that at the end he tries to drag Othello into 
the same net with himself can be explained hj 
other motives than malevolence.^ Most of all he 
lusts for a sense of his own power, and like 
Nietzsche, he knows nothing of the strength that 
dedicates itself to bearing the burdens of others. He 
therefore finds an actual enjoyment in his villainy, 
not primarily because he wants revenge, as is the 
conventional opinion, but because lie delights in 
the sense of strength and skill that is awakened by 
successful intrigue.2 He chuckles over his disguise 
and plays with it ; he becomes so fasci- cf. 11. Ui. 
nated with the game that he half forgets ^^' ^^■ 
the ends for which it was originally undertaken, 
and we hear about his marital jealousy of the Moor 
gnawing his inwards, and even of a n. i. 304- 
similar jealousy of Cassio. ^^^• 

The palpable absurdity of his believing such 
suspicions, and of their " gnawing his inwards," 
even if he did believe them, is so great that many 
critics, following Coleridge, have discovered in 
these utterances the workings of conscience seek- 
ing some justification for the deeds it beholds 
committed. There is, however, no necessity for 
such an assumption. A cold-blooded calculating- 
machine like lago must always have some ulterior 
end in view in everything he does. Are there not 
many excellent people who can never take a walk 
or go upon a journey without inventing some 

1 See below, p. 126. 

2 See Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays : Othello. 



114 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

errand or call of business by way of a pretext? 
lago is one of this class. Starting out to get 
money, position, and a taste of revenge en route, 
he is so far carried away by his delight in the hunt 
that to keep his self-respect as a rational being he 
has to invent as many reasons as his imagination can 
rake together to justify himself in taking the enor- 
mous risks he is incurring. Calculation, not con- 
science, is the only explanation needed for his 
" motive hunting." Calculation and a passion for 
intrigue explain the overwhelming majority of his 
words and deeds. The little that remains outside 
springs from sources not a whit more pure. 

How lago will act when his trap finally closes 
upon li self is foreshadowed in the analysis just 
made. Devoid as he is of all moral sensibility, he 
betrai . neither sorrow nor shame as the network 
of his villainy is at length unravelled in the sight 
of the world, and his victims lie stricken before 
his eyes. He confesses just enough to secure a 

.. companion in punishment, then closes 

his lips forever. Unrelenting, cold as 
the remorseless ice of an Alpine glacier, he is led 
away in silence to the torture chamber. 

Does lago live in this real world of ours ? Can 
a human mother bring forth such a monster ? The 
answer of transcendentalism is unequivocal. In 
the most emphatic terms Kant affirms and reaffirms 
the doctrine that " there is no man so depraved 
that in transgressing [the moral law] he would not 
feel a resistance, and an abhorrence of himself, so 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 115 

that he must put a force on himself." ^ The very 
existence of transcendentalism is bound up with the 
maintenance of this position. For the categorical 
ought is the offspring of pure reason, and pure 
reason, as the source of the fundamental princi- 
ples of all forms of knowledge, is an essential ele- 
ment of even the most primitive human mind. 
Moreover, the purpose of the creation of man 
lies in his reducing the inner world of impulse 
and the outer world of blind force to a cosmos 
governed by reason's law. Obviously nature can- 
not be represented as defeating its own ends by 
creating instruments that lack the fundamental 
requisite for the performance of their appointed 
function. 

Whom, then, shall we believe, Kant or Shake- 
speare ? As was promised in the introduction to 
this study, the question of the objective value of 
Shakespeare's delineations has hitherto been kept 
in the background. At this point, however, an 
exception to the previously observed policy seems 
to be called for. In the first place, as the outcome 
of carefully conducted researches carried on by a 
large number of investigators during the past forty 
years, there has come into existence a group of 
important principles that are accepted by all 
authorities regardless of what other ethical and 
metaphysical theories they may happen to hold. 
Here, for once, then, we can test Shakespeare's 

^ Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten; Einleitung zur Tugendlehre. 
Abbott's Translation, p. 290, note. 



1 1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

fidelity to nature by criteria more objective than 
individual prejudices and fancies. In the second 
place, as we have already seen, and as we shall 
have farther opportunity to discover in our study 
of Macbeth, Shakespeare's criminals are constantly 
being misinterpreted through ignorance of the 
character of their prototypes in our own world. A 
brief review of certain of the results of criminal 
psychology may accordingly prove of genuine ser- 
vice to the cause of Shakespearean criticism. 

The most important and startling of these re- 
sults is one that vindicates in every detail Shake- 
speare's portrait of lago. As all students of moral 
pathology are agreed, there exists a type of man 
to which the name born or instinctive criminal 
has been given.^ The essential characteristics of 
this class are two in number : first, complete moral 
insensibility, revealed by absence of all repugnance 
to the suggestion of crime before the deed and of 
remorse after the commission. This, of course, does 
not mean that the criminal is unaware that the 
adjective " wrong " is by many people attached to 
certain classes of action, or that society or God 
dislikes such actions, and will strike back in re- 
venge when the chance offers. What he lacks is 
the experiences that give the moral vocabulary its 
meaning to the good man. This phenomenon is 
often called moral imbecility. The second charac- 
teristic of the born criminal is a high degree of 

1 Both terms are misleading; the adjective "incorrigible" 
seems to me more satisfactory. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 117 

perversity, that is, the dominance of desires that 
are either directly anti-social, — as malicious 
cruelty and revengefulness, — or at least seducive, 
by which is meant peculiarly liable to grow at 
the expense of the higher interests. Most promi- 
nent among the latter are laziness, love of money, 
and lust. 

The existence of this variety of Homo sapiens is 
in no way dependent upon the truth of theories 
about the shape of criminals' skulls, the develop- 
ment of their lower jaw, and much else of the 
same sort. For the existence of the psychological 
differentias of the class is not called in question 
by any opponent of the Italian school of criminal 
anthropology who has made a first-hand study of 
the subject, in whatever way he may be inclined to 
explain the facts. 

"Whether the term moral imbecility shall be re- 
stricted to those in whom conscience is absolutely 
a zero is, of course, a mere matter of terminology. 
Such persons are few in number, and the degrees 
of approximation to that state are innumerable. 
The ordinary basis of classification seems to be 
obtained by including under the name born crimi- 
nal those who have exhibited entire absence of 
moral sensibility with regard to such capital or 
penitentiary offences as they may be known to have 
committed. 

The evidence for the existence of moral imbe- 
cility is varied in nature and only too abundant 
in amount. We may lay it down as a universal 



ii8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

law that remorseful guilt will confess when con- 
fronted with the proof of its evil deeds. In fact, 
there are many cases on record where the unsus- 
pected but repentant criminal has voluntarily sur- 
rendered himself into the hands of the law. In 
not a few of these instances the motive has been a 
craving for punishment, born of moral indignation 
against the lower nature to which surrender has 
been made.^ But the born criminal never con- 
fesses until the evidence against him is absolutely 
overwhelming, and often not even then. Further- 
more, he disclaims all feelings of sorrow and repent- 
ance ; he openly gloats over past success, or mourns 
over failure ; he often slanders the injured party 
from the dock out of pure malice, under circum- 
stances where he cannot suppose he will thereby 
change the outcome of the trial ; and finally, he 
is given to abusing the police, the jury, or the 
judge, after his conviction. Occasionally he dis- 
plays some feeling at his trial, but it is very 
remote in nature from remorse. Despine relates 
that a murderer twenty-two years of age on being 
brought to trial manifested no concern of any kind 
till informed that in the room of his victim, where 
he and his accomplice had succeeded in finding 
only eighty francs, a purse of fifteen hundred 
francs was concealed. Thereupon he burst into 
tears, exclaiming, " Oh, I told Chopin that it didn't 

1 This seemingly paradoxical emotion is exhibited in more than 
one of Shakespeare's characters : e. g., Posthumus in Cymbeline. 
See v., iv., 3-29 ; v., 210-225. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 119 

pay to kill a man for eighty francs." ^ Moreover, 
when the wife murderer sleeps quietly for two 
or three nights in the bed by the side of the 
victim of his knife, and when the parricide is 
found in a saloon on the evening of the murder 
smoking calmly and watching with interest a 
game of billiards, then we are entitled to infer 
that remorse can hardly be disturbing their peace 
of mind. More striking than any other class of 
evidence is that exhibiting the attitude of many 
criminals towards God. Take as an example the 
following typical case. " A wife who was poison- 
ing her husband wrote to her accomplice : ' He is 
not well. . . Oh, if God would have pity on us, 
how I would bless Him ! When he complains [of 
the effects of the poison] I thank God in my 
heart.' And he answers, ' I will pray to Heaven 
to aid us.' And she again, ' He was ill yesterday. 
I thought that God was beginning His work. I 
have wept so much that it is not possible God 
should not have pity on my tears.' " ^ In their ex- 
pectation of the approbation and sympathy of an 
all-seeing and impartial spectator, these murderers 
show beyond the possibility of mistake how far 
they are removed from self-condemnation and 
shame. 

The impression that the layman carries away 
from the reading of such reports is confirmed by 
the concurrent testimony of those who have had 

1 Psychologie naturelle, Vol. II., p. 416. 
3 Havelock Ellis, The Criminal, p. 158, 



1 20 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

the best opportunities for studying the criminal 
at first hand. The brilliant Russian author, Dos- 
toieffsky, who spent several years in a Siberian 
prison, declares that he never met with one 
instance of moral suffering caused by the memory 
of a crime. " I have," he continues, " frequently 
heard convicts relate the most terrible crimes, the 
most unnatural deeds, laughing heartily at the 
recollection of them." ^ Perhaps the most exhaus- 
tive investigation ever made into this subject is 
tliat undertaken by the eminent Italian authority, 
Ferrijin preparation for his work on homicide. Of 
seven hundred criminals, murderers and thieves, 
whom he examined, more than ten per cent, he tells 
us, gave " absolute proof by the shamelessness of 
their behavior of the entire absence of remorse ; " 
and the probable proportion of the completely 
indifferent and unrepentant is placed at thirty-five 
per cent.2 

Troubled by some vague suspicion of such facts, 
transcendentalism has at times shifted its position. 
Moral insensibility is admitted, but is asserted to 
be the result of a long-continued course of wrong- 
doing. Thus it is said that " a man to be what 
lago is, when we see him, must have gone through 
much perversion and many gradations of evil." ^ 
This does not seem to be Shakespeare's view. lago 

^ Dostoieffsky, Buried Alive, chap. i. 

2 Lombroso, The Criminal (L'uomo delinquente), German Trans- 
lation, Vol. I., pp. 348-350. 

2 Giles, Human Life in Shakespeare, p. 116. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 121 

is but twenty-eight ; while of Richard III. his own 
mother bears the impressive testimony : 

" Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; 
Thy school-days frightful, desperate, Richard HI. 
wild, and furious, ^^' ^^- ^^^• 

Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and 
venturous." 

Again the dramatist and the criminal psychologist 
are at one. Despine's classical work contains 
examples of moral imbecility from every period 
of life, beginning with twelve years. One of Feuer- 
bach's worst cases is a youth of fourteen.^ Moral 
imbecility may thus be due to a congenital taint. 

We must accordingly face the fact that there 
are human beings in whom not the slightest trace 
of moral sensibility has ever been discovered. 
However, among the morally imbecile, as this term 
was defined on page 117, there sometimes appear 
faint traces of a better nature. Goneril's dark 
heart we have seen lighted for an instant by a 
gleam of moral indignation. Macbeth and Lady 
Macbeth were true to each other. The importance 
of understanding these two tragic figures, the most 
subtle delineations in the long line of Shakespeare's 
criminals, will justify us in dwelling for a moment 
upon these inconsistencies of the human will. 

Absence of remorse means inter alia complete 
indifference to the sufferings of the victim. But 

^ Fenerbach, Aktenmassige Darstellung merkwiirdiger Ver- 
brechen, chap, xxviii. 



122 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

with this leaden apathy may go some considerable 
capacity for sharing the joy and sorrow of one or 
two intimate associates. Certain poisoners and 
other murderers have even been notably chari- 
table ; although those who ought to know assert 
that such benevolence is mixed with much alien 
material. Again, there are cases on record where 
no affection, not even the slightest, has shown 
itself for any human being. On the other hand, 
the emotion need not be wholly wanting, and 
it occasionally occurs in great intensity. For ex- 
ample, Lombroso declares that one of the most 
ferocious female criminals he ever knew was 
passionately fond of children. 

It must be added, however, that what affection 
and sympathy these miserable beings possess is apt 
to be wholly capricious in its workings. Lacenaire, 
a brutal thief and murderer, of whom we shall hear 
again, declared that he was never overcome by the 
sight of his victim's corpse : " When I kill a person 
I have no more feeling about it than when I drink 
a glass of wine," are his own words. But he ad- 
mitted that he was overcome with sorrow at the 
death of his cat. To save its life he risked his 
own on the very day that he murdered an old lady 
and her son for their money.^ Perhaps the most 
extraordinary instance of one-sided sympathy ever 
chronicled is that told by Lombroso on the author- 
ity of Paul Lindau : " A man by the name of 
Schunicht murdered one of his former mistresses 

1 Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., pp. 301, 317. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 123 

in the most brutal manner and with an indifference 
absolutely revolting. He had already left the house, 
when it occurred to him that the body might remain 
undiscovered for weeks, and in that event the canary 
belonging to the murdered woman would starve to 
death. Thereupon Schunicht retraced his steps, 
scattered enough food upon the floor of the cage to 
last the bird for several days, and opened the cage- 
door and the window in the adjoining room so that 
in any event the bird could make its escape." ^ 

This anomalous trait is sometimes accompanied 
by another characteristic even more paradoxical. 
Given the rudiments of sympathy, it will some- 
times assume the form of sentimentality. By this 
is meant playing the r6le of the sympathetic and 
generous mind, not merely before the world, but 
also before oneself, the actor evidently deceiving 
himself more or less for the time, and enjoying the 
resulting emotion ; just as some people who never 
give way to resentment in any form delight in im- 
agining that they have savage tempers, and others 
like to think of themselves as unhappy for the sake 
of the pleasures of self-pity thereby gained. Says 
that profound student of criminal humanity, Anselm 
von Feuerbach : " There is an intimate relation, 
especially in cold natures, between the cravings of 
romantic emotionalism and the sentimentality that, 
driven by a kind of necessity, titillates the inner 
sense by what is not really felt, but merely imagines 
itself felt ; that attempts to palm off upon itself 

1 Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., p. 318. 



124 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

and the world mere grimaces in the place of 
genuine passions, thereby poisoning forever the 
source of the fundamental certitudes, the emotional 
life. . . . The genuine feelings are soon smothered 
by the spurious, which explains the fact that senti- 
mentality is compatible with the most complete 
hardness of heart and even with active cruelty." ^ 

A sufficient illustration of this principle is 
afforded by the " literary remains " with which cer- 
tain of these choice spirits have enriched the world. 
No more malignant fiend was ever cursed with life 
than Thomas Wainewright, the poisoner. " Yet 
the chief characteristic of his essays," says Ellis, 
"is their sentimentality. Himself he describes 
as the possessor of a soul whose nutriment is love, 
and its offspring, art, music, divine song, and still 
holier philosophy." ^ Reading such flowing lines, 
we shall not be surprised to learn that when the 
muses smile upon him, the moral imbecile may 
become the poet of love and friendship. A typical 
example presents itself in the notorious Lacenaire. 

Lacenaire has perhaps been sufficiently charac- 
terized in what was said of him above. Yet there 
may be profit in having a more concrete idea of 
this strange personality as the representative of a 
class, and I therefore quote briefly from his biog- 
raphy as given by Despine.^ On trial for his life 

1 Feuerbach, opus cit., p. 15. 

^ Havelock Ellis, opus cit., p. 153. His biography is given in 
brief by Ellis, p. 12 ff., and p. 127. On this subject cf. Feuerbach, 
opus cit., p. 358. 

3 Opus cit., Vol. II., p. 423 £f. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 125 

on thirty different counts, — burglaries, forgeries, 
assaults, and murders, — his interest seemed to be 
completely centered in presenting a good appear- 
ance to the world contained within the court-room 
walls. " He seated himself upon the prisoner's 
bench with complete self-possession, and talked to 
his lawyer with a smile upon his lips. He acted 
as if he had no part wliatever in the trial that was 
about to begin, an attitude which he maintained 
throughout, and which appeared to the spectators 
as posing." This was no comedy intended to de- 
ceive the court, for, the evidence against him being 
absolutely complete, he admitted his guilt from 
the first. He listened without emotion to the 
reading of the long list of his crimes, and later 
described them in an indifferent and flippant tone 
which filled his hearers with horror. At times he 
smiled agreeably, at other times laughed heartily, 
as in giving an account of the murder of a girl who 
possessed information that might compromise him 
with the police. He lured her into his room, in- 
duced her to drink a bottle of wine with him, and 
thereupon stabbed her. This adventure, as he 
related it, he seemed to find very amusing. 

The following incident in his trial will throw ad- 
ditional light upon his character. A double mur- 
der had been committed some time before, but no 
clue to the perpetrators had been found. Lace- 
naire, since he had nothing to lose, announced him- 
self as the murderer, and affably informed the 
authorities that he had two accomplices whose 



126 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

names he gave, and whose whereabouts he dis- 
closed. His motive in thus ruining his comrades 
was not revenge for some real or fancied wrong. 
It was merely the desire for company that misery 
feels, a phenomenon described clearly in the fol- 
lowing report of another trial taken from the 
same rich storehouse : " I was perfectly willing 
to kill, I did n't mind it a bit, for they had prom- 
ised to pay me for it ; but I wanted Joseph to strike 
the blow with me, so that if I was caught I should 
not get into trouble alone." ^ Lacenaire had his 
reward. His accomplices were executed with him. 
When one of these unfortunate beings, who per- 
sisted in denying his guilt, fell into a paroxysm of 
fury at the completeness of the evidence against 
him, Lacenaire laughed till the tears rolled down 
his cheeks. 

Such was the man who, under sentence of death, 
his execution but a few weeks distant, unrepentant 
and devoid of shame, was capable of writing a 
poem beginning with the following Hnes.^ 

" Maudissez-moi, j'ai ri de vos bassesses, 
J'ai ri des Dieux, pour vous seuls inventes ; 
Maudissez-moi : men ame, sans faiblesses, 
Fut ferme et francbe en ses atrocites. 
Pourtant cette sime etait loin d'etre noire, 
Je fus parfois beni des raalheureux . . . 
A la vertu si mon coeur et.t pu croire, 
N'en doutez pas, j'eusse ete vertueux." 

1 Despine, Vol. II., p. 175. Cf. above, p. 113. 

2 Lombroso, opus cit.. Vol. I., p. 424. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 127 

In a few born criminals, I repeat, what little sym- 
pathy they possess takes the form of sentimentality. 
Weakness of sympathy is accompanied usually, 
though not invariably, by imperfect development 
of autopathy, or interest in one's own future. 
Where the imagination is too sluggish to enable its 
possessor to put himself into another man's place, 
it is likely to fail when he attempts to project him- 
self into scenes and conditions not immediately 
connected with the imperious present. Thus, like 
the savage and the infant, he may be absolutely 
indifferent to even the foreseen evils of to-morrow. 
Then it happens that he will commit crimes in 
order to get money for a few days' debauchery, 
although, as he afterwards admits, he was perfectly 
aware all the time that detection and punishment, 
this often involving the death penalty, would be 
the inevitable consequence. 

" Bien fou, ma foi, qui sacrifie 
Le present au temps a venir," 

these lines of Lacenaire appear to represent the 
maxim upon which he habitually acts.^ The fol- 
lowing incident described by Dostoieffsky shows 
how it works in practice. Dontoff " was brought 
before the court martial, and sentenced to run the 
gauntlet. He was . . . mortally afraid of physical 
pain. He managed to secrete a knife about his 
person, and on the eve of the fatal day, he at- 

1 They follow immediately his above-quoted lamentation for 
the virtues he never possessed. 



128 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

tempted to stab one of his officers, as he entered 
the cell. He was perfectly aware that by this act 
he only aggravated his punishment, and yet he did 
it merely for the sake of having the terrible mo- 
ment put off for a few days, at the utmost." ^ 

Among other ways the sovereignty of the present 
shows itself in indifference to punishment in a 
future life. Comparatively few criminals are athe- 
ists, and few deny the existence of a life beyond the 
grave, where man must render an account of the 
deeds done in the body. Sometimes their indif- 
ference about consequences is really due to moral 
obtuseness ; they cannot see that they have done 
anything to awaken the wrath of God. Others 
with more intelligence admit the fact but do not 
care. 

This principle of criminal psychology is illus- 
trated by Shakespeare over and over again. " For 
the life to come, I sleep out the thousrht 

Winter s ? r a 

Tale IV. of i^j" says Autolycus. Not different 

iii. 30. was the attitude of his more famous 

1 Henry predecessor. In his tilts with Prince Hal, 
IV. I. 11. Falstaff can treat eternal damnation as 

a huge joke. In a different mood, when 
admonished in straightforward English of the need 
to repent, he thrusts the suggestion from him ; 
there is a momentary pang of terror and the inci- 

2 Henry ^"^"^ ^^ ended. But when death comes 
IV. n. iv. to his bedside and says, " To-day," the 
250-5. oi^^ lifelong indifference vanishes like 

1 Opus cit., chap. iy. 



Conscience and the Conscienceless 129 

a dream, and he who once spared neither heaven nor 
hell in his jests may now be heard call- Henry v. 
ing in agony upon God to avert the ^^- ^- ^~^^- 
doom that he had never doubted would one day be 
his. It was not otherwise with Richard III. ; it 
was not otherwise with Macbeth. The Thane of 
Cawdor, in the full flood of his ambition, looking 
the certainty of unending torment fairly in the face, 
declares that if he could only be assured of success 
in this life he would not hesitate to " jump the life 
to come." The denunciation of eternal punish- 
ment, frequently proclaimed to be a Macbeth i. 
specific against deliberate surrender to ^^- '^■ 
criminal suggestion, proves itself powerless in just 
those persons for whom it is most needed. 

There is much else in Sha.kespeare's portrayal of 
criminals that it would be of advantage to study, if it 
were not that anything like a complete treatment 
of the subject would take us too far from the main 
course of our inquiry. His knowledge is by no means 
confined to the moral imbecile. All the classes into 
which modern authorities have divided the variety 
" criminal " he knew and described, adjusting the 
kind and degree of their emotional reaction to the 
accomplished deed with a nicety and a precision 
that other men could have attained only after 
years devoted to the subject. Again, the principle 
laid down by Lombroso and Ferrero : " In general 
the moral physiognomy of the born female crimi- 
nal approximates strongly to that of the male," ^ 

1 The Female Offender, p. 187. 



ijo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

he observed and illustrated in Macbeth, King Lear, 
Pericles (Dionjza), and Cymbeline. Even the 
little things did not escape his notice. His thieves 
1 Henry IV. Spend as quickly as they win. His 
I. ii. S7- vagabonds answer to the description of 
*^' Locatelli : " Of all criminals they are 

the most jolly, so that they are gladly welcomed 
into whatever society they find themselves thrust." ^ 
Indeed we may assert without exaggeration that 
there is no one principle of criminal psychology 
that is at once important and assured, no proposi- 
tion that would command the assent of all careful 
students who know the criminal at first hand, that 
cannot be derived from the Shakespearean drama. 

1 Quoted by Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., p. 378. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE FREEDOM OF THE TVTLL 

As Shakespeare contemplated such characters as 
Richard and lago, the profoundest problems of life 
must have come thronging in upon his mind. Is a 
man born to crime, because insensible to goodness, 
responsible for what he does ? Can he properly be 
blamed for acting out his own nature ? Again, 
what of the inner life of these creatures ? They 
wreck others without a qualm : is it well with 
them ? Finally, when they look upon the good 
man with contempt, as they do, is there any basis 
in the nature of things for their attitude ? Or on 
what they themselves would admit to be facts, can 
they be shown to be mistaken ? 

As the outcome of his studies, Despine lays down 
the corollary that the moral imbecile is a com- 
pletely irresponsible being. Devoid of all motive 
for seeking the good, he has no freedom to choose 
between the better and the worse, and without 
freedom there can be no responsibility. If this 
last statement were brought forward by moralists 
as a principle deduced by themselves from the data 
gathered during their investigations, it would have 
to be ignored in a study that aims merely to pre- 



132 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

sent the phenomenology of the moral consciousness. 
But the believer in free-will does not and cannot 
separate his own convictions on this subject from 
the opinions of the race. All men, he asserts, and 
must assert, from the savage to the sage, regard 
freedom as an essential condition of responsibility ; 
and accordingly where they impute the latter they 
postulate the former. An assertion of this nature 
properly belongs within the scope of our inquiry. 
Our examination into its validity will call for an 
answer to two questions : Does the common man 
regard himself and his neighbor as free ? Does he 
limit responsibility by freedom ? 

Before entering upon a study of the subject, it 
is necessary to point out the ambiguity of the word 
freedom. It would be an easy matter to make out 
a list of ten or twelve senses in which it is used in 
standard ethical treatises. Fortunately for the 
reader, many of them may be neglected, but it will 
be impossible to take a single step without distin- 
guishing at least four possible meanings of the 
term. 

In the first place, then, the will, or, better, the 
person, may be said to be free in so far as he is 
able to do what he desires to do, and to refrain from 
doing what he desires not to do. This freedom 
may be limited by the forces of external nature, or 
the superior physical strength of other living 
beings. It may also be limited by agencies that 
are represented, more or less completely, in our 
own consciousness : the sneeze, the laugh, or the 



The Freedom of the Will 133 

hysteria, which, let us try our utmost, prove to be 
uncontrollable ; the impulses of suicidal and homi- 
cidal mania, and the like, that sweep a man away 
to actions which never for an instant have his con- 
sent, and which he views as he performs them with 
grief and horror. 

In a second sense we may be said to be free 
when we are able to bring all our actions into con- 
formity with our permanent desires. The sover- 
eignty of the passing instant is broken. We act 
and in acting know we shall not be called upon to 
regret, except as new insight may show our deed 
to be something other than we had thought it. For 
better or worse our destiny is what in our coolest 
hours we would have it, in so far as destiny is 
determined by character. 

Again, man is endowed with a third kind of 
freedom in so far as he is capable of becoming 
what he desires to be, i. e., in so far as he has 
the power to modify and transform the character 
with which he was endowed at birth. This he can 
do through his control over his actions and 
thoughts, in virtue of the principle that impulses 
to action, if inoperative through a considerable 
portion of time, tend to lose their strength and in 
many cases actually disappear. In this way the 
clamorous passion, the untamed appetite, cow- 
ardice, inertia, and selfishness, may be gradually 
eliminated, and higher elements substituted in their 
place. The man whose early life was a chaos of 
conflicting impulses may thus attain ultimately to 



134 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

the peace that shall never be broken by rebellion. 
" ' T is in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our 
T » ;„ bodies are our eardens, to the which 

lago in o 7 

otheUo I. our wills are gardeners ; so that if we 
^' ' will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set 
hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one 
gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to 
have it sterile with idleness, or manured with 
industry, why, the power and corrigible authority 
of this lies in our wills." The condition upon 
which this form of freedom rests is the will to use 
M. for M. it. " Look, what I will not, that I can- 
n. ii. 51. nQt do," says Angelo, with profound 
truth. Whoever is sufficiently desirous of growing 
thyme or lettuce to manure the soil with industry 
shall have his reward. For others there can be 
only weeds. 

The denial of freedom in any of these forms is 
the dogma of fatalism in the proper significance of 
that much-abused term. Fatalism as we find it in 
the popular thought of the ancient Greeks, and in 
Mohammedan theology, is primarily a doctrine of 
what happens to man, but it may be applied with 
equal propriety to what he does. It asserts that 
the will is not a factor in, but merely an impotent 
spectator of the struggle of life ; that nothing comes 
to pass because we determine it shall be. (Edipus, 
for instance, is fated to kill his father and marry 
his mother. It would have made no difference 
how firmly he determined never to take a human 
life, and how tenaciously he held to his purpose. 



The Freedom of the Will 135 

He and his father must meet, if not in the narrow 
pass, then somewhere else ; and if (Edipus had still 
remained firm, his will would have been stricken 
with paralysis and, as in an attack of homicidal 
mania the mother may plunge the knife into her 
child's heart in the very instant in which, with 
agonized cries, she urges him to flee, so (Edipus 
would have beheld his own hand striking the blow 
that he was powerless to stay. The will refuses 
its consent ; but the deed is done in despite of the 
will. 

It is obvious that for actions of this kind no man 
can be held responsible. For responsibility means 
that a man is the proper object of moral judgment 
because of his deed. Now, moral judgment is 
directed to character, and here is an action that 
is not the outcome of the character, and that sheds 
no light whatever upon the direction in which it 
is moving. All members of the European races 
recognize this fact to-day, and all hold that at 
least some actions are not fated. As no contem- 
porary moralist would dispute this statement, there 
is no need of dwelling upon it at greater length. 

But many philosophers assert the existence of a 
fourth kind of freedom, freedom from the law of 
causation. When a certain course of action is 
adopted or decided upon, they hold that this 
decision or determination has no cause. The idea 
of doing it suggested itself, of course, in accordance 
with the laws of association ; the idea of the rejected 
alternative presented itself to the mind in the same 



136 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

way. But the act of acceptance or rejection is itself 
causeless ; in vain would you seek in the man's 
character or past habits, interests or purposes, for 
the ground of its being. If it were possible for every 
condition, external and internal, to be repeated, 
there would be the same chance that the second 
time the acceptance would be replaced by rejection. 
This view is called indeterminism. 

A large number of authorities maintain, on the 
other hand, that the law of causation holds without 
exception in the mental as in the physical world. 
In so far as they believe in the autonomy of the 
will, as asserted in the preceding paragraphs, they 
hold that a man's actions are the outcome of his 
character, as it is at the time. A person may 
gradually change his character, if he wishes to ; he 
can conquer his passions, appetites, and bad habits, 
if he will. But the condition of his even attempting 
it is a wish to do so. And if the opposition is strong, 
no vague, weak longings will suflfice ; the change 
must be desired intensely. Now all the elements 
of his character, including his desire for improve- 
ment, must have had a beginning in time ; he who 
" has them," as we say, did not create them, for 
they are the inmost parts of himself. They arise 
and grow according to laws that we did not make 
and cannot alter. The doctrine that maintains the 
unbroken continuity of the causal series is called 
determinism. We now see that it has two forms, 
which may be called fatalistic and autonomic. Our 
problem may accordingly be stated as follows: 



The Freedom of the Will 137 

What attitude does the common man take, whether 
virtually or explicitly, to the position of autonomic 
determinism ? 

It will be obvious that determinism must affirm 
and indeterminism deny the possibility of fore- 
casting the actions of human beings. Not but 
that indeterminism may be compatible with a cer- 
tain amount of prophecy. No man can act ex- 
cept upon suggestions that come to him, and the 
appearance of these suggestions in the arena of 
consciousness is admitted on all hands to be rigidly 
determined. Furthermore — and this has often 
been overlooked — indeterminists are entitled to 
hold that a man cannot act upon suggestions that 
do not appeal to him ; ^ the freedom they contend 
for consists solely in an uncaused choice between 
alternatives that really attract. Thus an indeter- 
minist does not stultify himself when he declares 
his friend to be incapable of a falsehood, provided 
he knows him well enough to feel justified in assert- 
ing that the opportunity to gain an end through 
lying would never arouse in his friend even the 
slightest inclination to take advantage of it. 
Where contending desires dispute the field, how- 
ever, there, if indeterminism is right, prevision be- 
comes absolutely impossible. No one can tell, at 
any rate in matters of right and wrong, how such 
a preference will turn. Our problem accordingly 
takes this form : In cases of genuine moral con- 

^ So Despiue. Cf. James, Principles of Psychology, II., 577, 
note. 



138 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

flict, does the common man ever consider himself 
capable of forecasting the outcome? 

The answers given by Shakespeare to this ques- 
tion are strikingly uniform and consistent through- 
out. They are formulated once for all in a speech 
of Warwick in Henry IV. The king has been re- 
calling how the deposed Richard long ago fore- 
told Northumberland's present treason. Warwick 
replies : 

" There is a history in all men's lives, 
figuring the nature of the times de- 
ceased ; 
The which observed, a man may proph- 
esy, 
With a near aim, of the main chance of 

things 
As yet not come to life, which in their 

seeds 
And weak beginnings lie intreasured. 
2 Henry IV. Such things become the hatch and brood 
m. i. 80. of time ; 

And by the necessary form of this 
KingEichard might create a perfect guess 
That great Northumberland, then false 

to him, 
Would of that seed grow to a greater 

falseness ; 
Which should not find a ground to root 

upon, 
Unless on you. 

King. Are these things then necessities ? 
Then let us meet them like necessities." 



The Freedom of the Will 139 

This passage contains a distinct declaration that 
conduct is the necessary outcome of character, and 
accordingly in so far as we know the character we 
can foretell the conduct. Since we can never gain 
a complete acquaintance with the inner life, we 
can, it is true, only prophesy " with a near aim." 
But no hint is given that our power of prevision is 
confined to hopeless iniquity and inflexible saint- 
hood. Northumberland himself, while a weak and 
unprincipled man, does not appear to have been 
wholly bad. His acquaintances seemingly had no 
reason to doubt that better impulses were known 
to him ; the question with them was, would they 
predominate ? Richard and Warwick evidently 
thought not. And yet on the indeterministic theory 
there is no basis even for conjecture. The chances 
are one to one, and if the range of your calculation 
is sufficiently extensive that proportion will be 
realized. But any one person may have a run of 
luck, good or bad, as he may at rouge-et-noir^ and 
therefore all prediction about individuals is 
impossible. 

It may of course be objected that this statement 
of Warwick is a mere obiter dictum, or that at all 
events we have no more right to hold Shakespeare's 
other characters responsible for this expression of 
opinion than for good old Duncan's absurdity : 
'' There 's no art to find the mind's con- Macbeth I. 
struction in the face." The principle on ^^- ^2. 
which this objection is based is perfectly sound. 
Here, however, it avails nothing, for one of the 



140 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

most common phenomena in our dramas is the 
prediction of human action. Almost any of the his- 
tories or tragedies would supply satisfactory illus- 
trative material. 

In Othello, Act IL, scene i., line 254, Roderigo 
declares to lago, " I cannot believe that in her [Des- 
demona] ; she 's full of most blessed condition." 
This certainly looks like the spirit of prophecy ; 
but we shall do well not to treat it as evidence of 
the deterministic attitude, for it may mean : Des- 
demona is absolutely incapable of temptation in 
this direction. But when Lodovico, witnessing the 
last wild outbreak of Othello's rage, asks in sur- 
othello IV. prise : " Is this the nature whom passion 
1. 276. could not shake ? " but one inference 

from his words seems possible. For the very point 
of the question lies in the implication that Othello 
is not a passionless nature, not one whom passion 
never tried to shake, but rather one against whose 
granite will its waves had hitherto dashed in vain. 
Again we seem to have an unequivocal statement 
in Cassio's exclamation when Othello falls by the 
stroke of his own dagger, 

" This did I fear, but thought he had no 
V. ii. 359. weapon ; 

For he was great of heart." 

Possibly it may be objected that Cassio means no 
more than that he had considered the chances in 
favor of suicide to be even, but I venture to assert 
such an interpretation would have surprised Cassio. 



The Freedom of the Will 141 

The tragic interest of Antony and Cleopatra cen- 
tres in the downfall of a nature rich in possibilities 
for good. The Roman triumvir is no moral imbe- 
cile, nor is he one condemned by a hereditary 
curse to live only for the passing moment. Once 
he could bear deprivation and suffering in the pur- 
suit of power and fame. " Antony, leave thy las- 
civious wassails," cries Octavius : 

" When thou once 
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou 

slew'st 
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel 
Did famine follow ; whom thou fought'st 

against, 
Though daintily brought up, with 

patience more 
Than savages could suffer: thou didst 

drink 
The stale of horses, and the gilded a. and C. 

puddle I- i'- 65. 

Which beasts would cough at : thy palate 

then did deign 
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge ; 

And all this ... 
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy 

cheek 
So much as lank'd not." 

The ambition which enabled Antony at that time to 
endure even to the uttermost never became to him 
an unsubstantial dream. Furthermore, he had a 



142 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

genius for friendship, the basis of continuous 
wedded love ; witness the devotion he enkindled 
in his followers. He was generous even to his 
worst enemies, his disloyal friends. When his 
most trusted general, Enobarbus, forsook him for 
the winning side, he sent after the fugitive his 
Act IV. chests and treasures, which the latter 

scene v. had been unable to take with him. He 
never ceased to realize his own degradation. We 
might suspect it from this little incident of 
Enobarbus' treasures, if other proof were wanting. 
Once these forces almost dominated his life. 
There was a time when, had he been wedded to 
an Octavia, he might have ruled his share of the 
world, another Augustus. But in the toils of 
Cleopatra he becomes a different man. One who 
knew him as he once had been wonders to see 
him slight the most important business in order 
that " not a minute of [theirl lives 

I i 46 

should stretch without some pleasure." 
No one seems to think of the chance theory ; the 
only explanation which an old follower can sug- 
gest is that he is much changed. Enobarbus, hav- 
ing watched stage by stage the development of the 
new Antony, does not hesitate to predict the out- 
come of the marriage with Octavia. " He will 
to his Egyptian dish again : then shall the sighs 

of Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar ; 
H vi 134 

and that which is the strength of their 

amity shall prove the immediate author of their 

variance." Enobarbus includes three complicated 



The Freedom of the Will 143 

personalities, it will be observed, within the scope 
of his prophecy. Waiving all discussion as to the 
nature of his data with respect to the strong, single- 
minded triumvir and his noble sister, he certainly 
could not count in the case of Antony upon the 
total destruction of the desire to play a great part 
on the world's stage, of regard for the interests of 
his followers, of honor and self-respect. For still 
it remained true that now and then a " Roman 
thought" would strike him, pathetic witness of the 
impulses still stirring within his soul. But the 
shrewd old general believed he could foretell, when 
the two alternatives were presented to his master, 
which would be chosen. 

The only phase of the problem of the determina- 
tion of human conduct that Shakespeare's people 
ever discuss is the causes of character. Of the 
various theories that the ingenuity of man has 
put together the two that are most in favor are 
heredity and the influence of the stars. It is only 
on the latter hypothesis that Kent can explain 
the difference between Cordelia and her sisters. 
Gloucester goes farther ; the heavenly bodies can 
actually change a character already formed. Ed- 
mund, the superior intellect of the play, denies this 
and indeed the entire theory of " spherical predom- 
inance." For this reason he has been supposed to 
be an indeterminist. Such an inference, however, 
ignores the existence of a large number of alterna- 
tives, any one of which he may have held ; as the 
influence of education and surroundings, the mirac- 



144 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ulous interference of God or the devil, and much 
else. If Edmund believed that natural endowment 
is the most important factor in the making of char- 
acter, by the side of which nurture is a compara- 
tively insignificant though not entirely impotent 
force, natural endowment in turn being determined 
largely though not exclusively by heredity, he will 
be in agreement with what seems to have been the 
views of a large number of Shakespeare's people. 
Some of these in their surprise at the failure of 
heredity in a particular instance give the most 
unequivocal expression of belief in the potency of 
innate volitional capacities,^ 

On this subject I believe we for once get a 
'glimpse of the dramatist's own opinions. It is an 
invariable rule with him that, however dark the 
course of a story, its final scene shall close with 
an outlook upon a better world. Thus in Romeo 
and Juliet the death of the lovers leads to a recon- 
ciliation between two great families. In Macbeth 
and King Lear the floods of misrule and civil war 
finally subside, leaving in possession of the throne 
rulers strong, honorable, and humane, who — on 
the deterministic theory — may be expected to in- 
augurate an era of good government. Even in 
Othello we have the satisfaction of knowing that 
lago's career is ended; he can poison no more 
lives. 

1 Rich. III., I. iii. 229-231 ; Rich. II.. V. iii. 60-63 ; All 's Well, 
I. ii. 19-22 ; Lear, IV. iii. 34-37 ; Timon, IV. iii. 271-4 ; Pericles, 
IV. iii. 23-25 ; Tempest, IV. i. 188-189. 



The Freedom of the Will 145 

This rule seems at first sight grossly violated in 
All's Well that Ends Well, and that in the very 
teeth of the promise conveyed in its title. The end 
which is to be so delightful is the reconciliation of 
Bertram with Helena after his flight from her 
upon their forced marriage. Now, Helena is one 
of the most perfect of Shakespeare's characters. 
She represents that combination of strength and 
devotion which, as we have seen, is repeatedly de- 
clared to be the complete embodiment of moral 
beauty. Though living as a dependant in a titled 
family she has the intelligence and courage to 
recognize herself as the equal of the young mas- 
ter of the house. To obtain his love she risks tlie 
displeasure of her foster-mother, death at the king's 
court, and, what means most to her, dishonor 
through misinterpretation of her motives. Con- 
stantly called upon to act in circumstances of 
great difficulty she exhibits a quickness of appre- 
hension, tact, decision, and firmness, that alone 
would render her a marked character. Her pu- 
rity of mind is never doubtful in the most delicate 
situations. Sincerity shines through every deed. 
It wins at the outset the spectator of the play, who 
knows from the moment of her appearance that 
this young girl is no adventuress. It wins the 
king. Even total strangers trust her. As her 
sincerity evokes confidence, her sweetness and 
beauty procure her the love of man and woman. 

So much for Helena. " Look you now what 
follows." Bertram is indeed a man of courage, 

10 



146 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

spirit, and ability, but that is the end. In mat- 
ters that do not concern war he must be set down 
as a weak, gullible, and withal unprincipled cad. 
As Hamlet reveals his ideals through his friendship 
with Horatio, so we are entitled to infer the worst 
from the ascendency that Parolles gains over Ber- 
tram. In Hamlet, ideals never get worked out into 
life ; it is the reverse with Bertram. His com- 
panions at court, won at a glance by the loveliness 
of Helena, are more than willing to marry the 
physician's daughter whom the king's gratitude 
has permitted to select a husband. He who knows 
her best alone refuses. When forced under the 
yoke by the fiat of the king which neither party 
may resist, he follows up blindness and pride by a 
display of insolence, and the insolence is rather 
that of a child than of a man. His intrigue with 
Diana after his flight from Paris into Italy is as 
discreditable as an intrigue can be. He seeks to 
gain his will by promises that he does not intend 
to keep. Then confronted with the demand that 
he redeem his pledge, he turns and twists to avoid 
Diana's charges, blackening her character first in 
one way then in another. A study of the details 
of this episode will only serve to deepen the un- 
pleasant impression made by its outlines. 

Such, then, are the two principal characters of 
the play, a strong, noble woman and a spoiled, 
unprincipled boy. These are the people whose 
union for life is expected to call forth the excla- 
mation : Well done ! No wonder most readers 



The Freedom of the Will 147 

turn away in disgust. The plot seems to have 
descended to the plane of a summer novel where 
the only object is to get two people married. 
Some readers may indeed comfort themselves with 
the thought that Helena will reform her wayward 
husband. But that appears like a vain hope ; for 
reformation, as a process of cultivation, must have 
something to work upon. Nor, looking at the case 
in the abstract, is the percentage of success in this 
line of activity great enough to inspire with a high 
degree of confidence — let us say a father with 
marriageable daughters. 

Nevertheless, the play, I believe, is neither " dis- 
appointing," " perplexing," nor " profoundly im- 
moral." All does end well. The difficulties in 
which the poet has involved himself are due to 
his faithfulness to the original sources of the 
plot ; but he has found a solution, and one that is 
simplicity itself. He merely makes us acquainted 
with the characters of Bertram's father and 
mother. 

The distinguishing traits of the Countess are 
penetration, unselfishness, and the capacity for 
proportioning affection to real merit. This last 
she possesses in an extraordinary degree ; it frees 
her from all prejudices of aristocratic birth ; it 
makes her love Helena as her own daughter ; it 
drives her to cast off for a time her son when he 
exhibits a pride, an insensibility to virtue in the low 
born, and a hardness of heart that are alien to her 
own nature. Her philosophy of life makes the love 



148 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

of Helena for Bertram seem as normal as if the 
girl had been the daughter of one of her titled 
neighbors. 

The Count is dead, but his portrait has been care- 
fully preserved for us as it lived in the memory of 
the king. 

" In his youth 
He had the wit which I can well observe 
To-day in our young lords ; but they may 

jest 
Till their own scorn return to them un- 
noted 
Ere they can hide their levity in honour : 
So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness 
Were in his pride, or sharpness ; if they 

All's Well ^®^®' 

that Ends His equal had awaked them, and his 

Well honour, 

. u. 3 . Clock to itself, knew the true minute when 

Exception bid him speak, and at this time 

His tongue obey'd his hand: who were 

below him 

He used as creatures of another place 

And bow'd his eminent top to their low 

ranks. 

Making them proud, as his nobility 

In their poor praise he humbled." ^ 

The happy issue of the plot is thus entrusted 
to the workings of the principle of heredity. A 
hint of this solution is conveyed in the words 

^ The text of line 44 follows a conjecture of Hudson. 



The Freedom of the Will 149 

wifh which the king greets Bertram on the latter's 
presentation to him. 

" Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face ; 
Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, 
Hath well composed thee. Thy father's L. 19. 

moral parts 
Mayst thou inherit too ! " 

We may look forward with confidence to the fulfil- 
ment of this hope. The boy has developed slowly, 
and his growth in the past has been in part 
retarded by unfavorable influences from without. 
But now that the proper environment has been 
supplied, his true nature may be trusted to appear. 
For the existence within him of the potentialities 
of all goodness is guaranteed by the character of 
his ancestry. 

In a more famous play Shakespeare has taken 
the greatest pains to record his conviction that 
no absolute break is possible between our present 
and our past. The instantaneous transformation 
of Prince Hal from the boon companion of roy- 
sterers and cut-purses to the wise, self-restrained, 
and just king, was regarded by the chroniclers 
of his time as the result of a miracle. But this 
view of the matter is excluded with the greatest 
care in the dramas that describe his life. Every 
salient trait in the character of the king is either 
exhibited or asserted as existing in the 2 Hen. iv. 
prince: affection, generosity, the am- ^'^^^2-5^^ 



1 50 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

1 Hen. IV. bition that selects the noblest models 

V. V. 22-31. for emulation, regard for the life and 

1 Hen. IV. welfare of others, and hatred of sham 

jgg'"' ^ and hypocrisy. His very excesses are 

V. ii. 52-69. represented as in part the outcome of 

1 Hen. IV. some of his best qualities : his contempt 
V. X. 83-100. £qj, ^^^q artificial distinctions that are 

^^^^' I^' consecrated by court tradition ; his love 

IV. IV. 31- ^ , . -^ ^ , ' 

32. of the vigorous London lower-class 

2 Hen. IV. life ; his enjoyment of wit-combats and 
II. u. 6 ff. ^ hearty laugh. Nor were his frolics 
ever allowed to degenerate into mischief. Only 
one of them is of a really doubtful character, and 
in that the money which he helps to steal, or 
rather permits to be stolen, in order to perpetrate 
a joke upon Jack Falstaff, is returned to its owner 
the next day. 

Had this play been the creation of a slightly 
later period, such hints would have been judged 
sufficient. The mature Shakespeare is perfectly 
content to be misunderstood by those who cannot 
or will not supplement the detached and momen- 
tary pictures of his score of scenes by images 
of a continuous life of which the fragments upon 
the stage are but the barest suggestion. As it 
is, however, we are supplied with a clean-cut 
declaration of tlie doctrine of natural development 
in its application to the newly crowned king. And 
as if to give it the maximum of emphasis it is put 
into the mouths of two churchmen. 



The Freedom of the Will 151 

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath 
the nettle 

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen 
best 

Keighbour'd by fruit of baser quality : 

And so the prince obscured his contem- 
plation 

Under the veil of wildness ; which, no 

doubt, ?enry V. I. 

Grew like the summer grass, fastest by 
night, 

Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. 

Canterbury. It must be so ; for miracles 

are ceased ; 
And therefore we must needs admit the 

means 
How things are perfected. 

A simple application, this, of the principle that 
men do not gather grapes from thorns or figs from 
thistles. But it totally ignores the possibility of 
that inner creation of motive force out of nothing 
for which indeterminism stands. 

It may be of interest to note further that the 
just quoted confession of faith denies in the most 
unqualified manner one of the fundamental tenets 
of the Elizabethan church, St. Augustine's doctrine 
of grace. The official creed of the church as for- 
mulated in the Articles of 1563 affirms : " The con- 
dition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that 
he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own 
natural strength and good works, to faith and call- 



152 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ing upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do 
good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, with- 
out the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that 
we may have a good will, and working in us, when 
we have that good will." Again the churclimen 
speak for Shakespeare. As he explains the crimes 
of the moral imbecile without invoking the agency 
of the devil, so he describes the unfolding life of 
the noble soul in terms that leave as little room for 
miracle as for chance. Was he not in this respect 
as far in advance of the theologians of his age as 
in his conception of mental disease he was beyond 
the vast majority of its physicians ? 

To return from Shakespeare to Shakespeare's 
people : wherever we have an opportunity to make 
the test we find them manifesting a belief in the 
determination of volition by character. Usually 
they think of character as mainly the outcome of 
heredity ; sometimes, however, they attribute it 
rather vaguely to the miraculous interposition of 
supersensible powers ; occasionally, on the other 
hand, to the stars. With but two exceptions, 
which will be considered below, the notion of a 
causeless volition apparently never even enters 
their minds. 

Does the world look upon the man whose con- 
duct can be foretold as a morally irresponsible 
being ? The answer to this, the second of our two 
questions, is as clear and unequivocal as the answer 
to the first. In its approbation and reprobation of 
actions it asks only, do they really proceed from 



The Freedom of the Will i ^^ 

the character ? It takes for granted that the bad 
will is bad, the good will, good, however they came 
to be such ; in other words, that questions of quality 
or worth do not turn on theories of origin. Con- 
sult, in verification, that richest mine of ethical in- 
formation. King Lear. Nothing but a miracle 
could make the King of France believe Cordelia 
capable of a great wrong ; her nobility of character 
is for that reason none the less genuine and ad- 
mirable in his eyes. Cordelia, the Fool, and ulti- 
mately Albany, understand the nature of Goneril 
through and through, and the two former foretell 
her actions as with a prophet's vision. Yet this 
woman appears to them no less hateful and despic- 
able on that ground. Kent seems to believe that 
the characters of the three sisters are the product 
of stellar influences; this does not modify his 
judgment of what they are. ludeed, reprobation 
or admiration may be concomitant with an ex- 
plicit recognition of the deterministic position. 
Richard III., for instance, is declared by Queen 
Margaret to have been 

" Seal'd in [his] nativity Richard m. 

The slave of nature and the son of hell." ^- ^- 229. 

It does not occur to Margaret that this makes him 
any less loathsome. He is what he is, a foul blot 
on creation. Had his crimes been from first to 
last the outcome of chance, he could have been no 
more base or vile. So Timon judges the notoriety- 
seeking, pseudo-cynic Apemantus. 



154 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

" Thy father . . . 
Timon IV. ... in spite put stuff 

iii. 271. To some she beggar and compounded thee 

Poor rogue hereditary." 

The rogue hereditary is none the less a rogue. 

The average layman, then, finds nothing incom- 
patible with moral approbation in the conception 
of conduct as the necessary outcome of character. 
But certain speculative intellects have discovered 
difficulties in the deterministic doctrine of respon- 
sibility, and have asserted in consequence that 
a caused volition has no moral value. This view 
finds expression in Shakespeare's plays on two dif- 
ferent occasions. Hamlet, waiting in company with 
Horatio for his father's ghost, moralizes as follows 
upon the Danish reputation for drunkenness : 

" So, oft it chances in particular men, 
That for some vicious mole of nature in 

them, 
As, in their birth — wherein they are not 

guilty, 
Since nature cannot choose his origin — 
Hamlet I. ........ 

»▼■ 23. That these men, 

Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star, — 
Their virtues else — ... 
Shall in the general censure take cor- 
ruption 
From that particular fault." 



The Freedom of the Will 155 

Whether it is an accident that this opinion is put 
into the mouth of a university student I cannot 
say ; but I have often wondered whether we may 
not suppose that Hamlet picked it up from his lec- 
tures in philosophy at Wittenberg. At all events, 
I can find no satisfactory evidence that he uses any 
such principle in his concrete judgments of men 
and women. His old friends, Hosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern, he declares he 
will trust as he will adders fang'd. At the same 
time he justifies his own action in sending them to 
certain death on the ground that they 
richly deserved their fate. We can ex- 
tract indeterminism from this combination of cir- 
cumstances only by assuming that, through a long 
succession of free choices of evil, these two young 
men had completely seared their conscience, so that 
at last their conduct had become rigidly determined. 
The guilt now imputed to them might thus really 
attach to their past decisions. Whether this was 
the ground on which Hamlet condemned them so 
mercilessly, he unfortunately neglects to inform us. 
It would not be fair, however, to emphasize too 
much the difference between the philosopher and 
the layman. Their brains are of the same clay. 
It will, therefore, not be wonderful if an echo of 
the philosopher's perplexities is heard now and 
then in the world where men of action live and 
work. Shakespeare's second and last apologist 
for the criminal by heredity would count himself a 
member of this latter class. 



156 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

In Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., scene iv., Oc- 
tavius and Lepidus are discovered discussing the 
failings of their fellow-triumvir, Antony. To the 
bitter complaints of Octavius, Lepidus answers : 



L. 12. 



" His faults in him seem . . . hereditary, 
Rather than purchased ; what he cannot 

change, 
Than what he chooses." 



The language is a little ambiguous, but the voice 
sounds like the voice of the indeterminist. Whether 
the dramatist is here seeking to throw contempt 
upon this mode of whitewashing weakness and 
vice I will not undertake to decide, but there is 
much to suggest it. No excuse could have been 
more inappropriate under the circumstances, since 
Octavius might easily rejoin : It was all one to 
him why Antony could not be depended upon to 
perform the duties belonging to his position ; 
what he had to deal with was the fact, and on 
any theory of its cause he was confronted with 
a condition that must come to an end. These 

thoughts, indeed, can be read between 
See U. 16-32. ^, ,"? £ r^ 4. • ^ ^ rr 

the Imes of Octavms reply. He com- 
pletely ignores Lepidus' apology, continues to 
blame Antony without raising the question whether 
his faults could be changed or not, and asserts his 
own unwillingness to bear the burdens rolled upon 
his shoulders by another's voluptuousness. 

Evidently Lepidus does not understand the in- 
deterministic theory well enough to recognize the 



The Freedom of the Will 157 

limits within which, even in the eyes of its friends, 
its excuses are relevant. Or, perhaps shaken by 
fear that if Antony falls the heir of Julius Caesar 
may elect to rule the world alone, he is merely 
talking at random. This latter hypothesis has 
antecedent probabilities in its favor. Drama and 
history alike bear witness to the justice of the 
verdict pronounced by Antony soon after the estab- 
lishment of the triumvirate. 

" This is a slight unmeritable man, 
Meet to be sent on 6rrands. 



A barren-spirited fellow ; one that feeds f • ^- ^• 
On abjects, orts and imitations, 36-39. ' 

Which, out of use and staled by other 

men, 
Begin his fashion." 

Lepidus seems conscious of his weakness. And it 
may have been but a fulfilment of his forebodings, 
when, after he had served Octavius' purpose, he 
was thrown aside like a worn-out garment. 

The clever controversialist, Mr. Arthur Balfour, 
some years ago informed the public that modern 
determinism is bound to look upon the popular 
belief in free will as an illusion produced by 
natural selection. If society is to be kept alive, 
he imagines the argument to run, men must attrib- 
ute to each other moral responsibility and there- 
fore freedom ; if, then, the belief in the latter is an 
illusion, its existence can only be explained by 



158 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

the elimination of those communities amongst 
which it failed to appear. If we may trust Shake- 
speare, however,this hypothesis is wholly gratuitous. 
For the kind of free will about which Mr. Balfour 
is talking is separated by a great gulf from the 
freedom in which the typical man believes. The 
men of the Elizabethan era and the men of to-day 
agree in recognizing the existence of a freedom 
from external forces that permits the character, 
in its actions, to show what it really is. And 
where this power of self-expression exists they 
praise and blame, or in other words, impute respon- 
sibility. The vast majority of the human race 
have never dreamed of a freedom of another kind. 
When a Hamlet and a Lepidus fall into perplex- 
ities, it is because they confuse the necessity that 
links action to character and the necessity that 
wrenches action away from character, and forces 
into the world deeds which the will itself would 
never consent to send forth. 



% 



CHAPTER YII 
VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 

After Cornwall had blinded Gloucester, a servant 
who had witnessed the deed exclaimed, " I '11 
never care what wickedness I do, if Lear m. 
this man come to good." These words ^' ^^' 
are the expression of a deeply rooted postu- 
late of the human mind. In any tolerable order, 
it is felt, evil-doing must be followed by misfortune. 
In committing a wrong, the agent seizes upon a 
good that can become his only at the expense of 
some more important interest of another or others. 
Is this the end of the matter ? Or is the world so 
constructed that the infraction of the laws of social 
welfare inevitably involves an additional breach in 
individual well-being ? 

When the nobler natures fall, there waits for 
them a penalty in the form of remorse. Impres- 
sive, if brief, glimpses of its power in minds sus- 
ceptible in any degree to the higher impulses are 
afforded by the stories of Queen Gertrude and 
Enobarbus. And when in the blindness of passion 
a high-strung, sensitive man strikes with a deadly 
blow the being he loves best, as in Cymbeline and 
The Winter's Tale, the law that we reap more than 
we sow is fulfilled to the letter : 



i6o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

'• Though those that are betray'd 
m^i'^^7 ^^ ^®®^ *^® treason sharply, yet the traitor 
Stands in worse case of woe." 



But at least in its application to remorse this 
principle is not of universal validity. It would 
hold for Imogen as it held for Posthumus ; but 
lago's hard heart could laugh its threatenings to 
scorn. Remorse is due to the awakening of moral 
sensibilities that have been temporarily drugged 
into torpor ; therefore, it can never trouble those 
in whom conscience is either dead or unborn. 
The moral imbecile and the hardened criminal in 
all cases, and men of only average moral aptitudes 
in some cases, are thus proof against everything 
except extra-moral suffering. Do penalties of this 
class appear, then, where conscience is inert and 
remorse fails ? 

That the wicked man often brings trouble upon 
himself as the direct result of his wickedness, it 
requires no argument to prove. Such misfortune 
may take on a score of forms that are sufficiently 
well known, as disease, imprisonment, and failure. 
But evil-doing has indirect effects no less disas- 
trous that are frequently overlooked. It has been 
said that the worst punishment of the liar is not 
that others cannot believe him, but that he can- 
not believe others. This principle, of course, holds 
for every variety of treachery. Its workings can 
be traced without difficulty in Richard II. and 
Henry TV. Here we see a pack of human wolves 



Virtue and Happiness i6i 

uniting to remove an obstacle in their way, and 
then, the immediate object accomplished, viewing 
each other with distrust and suspicion, which ul- 
timately create the violence they apprehend. 

" The love of wicked men converts to fear; 
That fear to hate, and hate turns one or Eichard n. 

both V. i. 66. 

To worthy danger and deserved death." 

Success thus purchased can have no more stability 
than a wave of the sea. 

It is true that in a society altogether dominated 
by such men, the good are often swept away with 
the bad to a common ruin. Witness, for instance, 
the fall of Duke Humphrey, in Henry VI. Never- 
theless, there is a tendency at work in favor of the 
good. In so far as "nobleness enkindles noble- 
ness," they live in a better world than the bad. 
Brutus could say with his dying breath, j. c. 
" In all my life I found no man but he ^- ^- ^^^ 
was true to me." And thus it proved with Henry 
V. In contrast with almost all the other reigns of 
the historical plays, where the king is either self- 
indulgent and greedy of money, or treacherous and 
unprincipled, or criminally weak and cowardly, wc 
behold a reign whose peace, as soon as the true 
temper of the monarch is revealed, is not troubled 
by a single conspiracy ; more than this, a reign in 
which for the first time in many a year all the sub- 
jects of the king rally around him with devotion 
and enthusiasm in an enterprise that they believe 

11 



1 62 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

to be demanded by justice and patriotism. He 
lived, indeed, in a better world than his father or 
his son. 

The punishment of grave crimes is rendered 
more certain and also more overwhelming by a 
principle that is perhaps most effectively exhibited 
in Macbeth. Only a single act of violence is needed 
to place the Thane of Cawdor upon the throne of 
Scotland. But unfortunately circumstances com- 
pelled him to make a confidant of one man, Ban- 
quo ; and who can tell when Banquo may find it 
to his interest to turn against the master he helped 
to exalt ? So this possible enemy must die. With 
him must be sacrificed his son, that there may be 
no avenger left to terrify the murderer, and that 
the doom announced by the supernatural messen- 
gers of fate may be turned aside. These mysteri- 
ous acts of violence awaken general suspicion and 
fear. The fear of the subjects awakens new fear 
in the sovereign, that in turn provokes renewed acts 
of violence on his part. Strive against necessity 
as he will, sin, he discovers, plucks on sin; till 
finally the guilty dupe is buried under their ac- 
cumulated weight. 

As yet, however, we have discovered nothing 
worthy the name of a universal law. For the pen- 
alties thus far enumerated are by no means the 
inevitable consequence of a violation of the moral 
order. Some lagos escape detection, their plans 
succeed to their entire satisfaction, and they be- 
come pillars of society. Even if unmasked, it 



Virtue and Happiness 163 

happens more than once that " the wicked Hamlet m. 
prize itself buys out the law." No ex- "i- 59- 
eraplification of this truth is more revolting than 
Henry YIII., whom Shakespeare and Fletcher were 
compelled to dismiss, secure and apparently happy 
in the possession of his desired bride, and as the 
result of his very crimes freed forever from the 
hateful yoke of Rome. 

"What, then, is the successful villain, if only 
sufficiently callous, after all, a man to be envied ? 
Does his life of unsuspected or at least unchecked 
crime afford him the expected satisfaction ? The 
answer to this question is given in Macbeth. 

If we of the twentieth century would understand 
the impression made by this great tragedy upon 
its first auditors, we must become with them for the 
moment subjects of the first Stuart. We must look 
back upon the life of our ancestors as cramped and 
disfigured by conventions, prejudices, and super- 
stitions. We must think of our own life as a thing 
to be shaped solely with reference to the attain- 
ment of the best ends through the use of the most 
economical means. Whether we happen to know 
it or not, this ideal has come to us from Italy, where, 
after the night of the Middle Ages, it blossomed 
and bore fruit under the regenerating influences 
of classical culture. The great personalities it 
produced are not entirely unknown to us. Some 
were guided by the new light to seek a develop- 
ment of their volitional powers that made them 
a blessing to their own age and to posterity. 



164 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Others there were, however, whose emancipation 
from the past meant the destruction of every 
scruple, every restraint that might have kept them 
from making self the centre of their universe. 
These latter, if we have caught by contagion, or for 
any other reason share the feelings of the typical 
Italian, — these latter are our idols, particularly 
those among them who have risen to supreme 
power in the state. In this position they can in- 
dulge every wish, yes, every passing whim. What 
more can life offer ? And we could demonstrate, 
if necessary, that this happy condition would have 
been forever closed to them, had they not thrust 
aside from beginning to end every consideration 
except that of the best means to their own aggran- 
dizement. On the stage, in the seats reserved for 
the aristocracy, we see the incarnations of our 
ideals, men who, sometimes from comparatively 
humble beginnings, have attained to royal favor, 
wealth, station, and almost boundless power, through 
their superiority to the considerations that restrain 
the stupid and timid herd. It is with these 
thoughts, these ideals in the background of con- 
sciousness, that we watch the rise to greatness of 
a man and a woman dominated by our own spirit. 
Our hero is not an Italian, as we might have ex- 
pected. The dramatist has just given us Othello.^ 
Perhaps this may have moved him to lay the scene 

^ This chronology is conjectnral, as in most cases when we come 
to details; but, on the whole, it is the most plausible guess we 
can make. 



Virtue and Happiness 165 

in another part of the world, and to make the plot 
turn upon the employment of violence rather than 
intrigue. Perhaps, too, he thought the majority of 
his audience could better realize the political con- 
ditions of Scotland than of Italy. But whatever 
may have determined the setting, there can be 
no mistake about the essence of the drama. It 
represents the inner life of the unscrupulous and 
successful political adventurer of the Sixteenth 
Century. 

Macbeth is to-day commonly, perhaps univer- 
sally regarded as a tragedy of remorse. Such a 
conception is, I believe, not merely erroneous, it 
utterly obscures the connection between evil-doing 
and its harvest that is set forth in the play. The 
first step towards discovering this relationship 
must therefore be an examination of the tradi- 
tional theory. 

The view that Macbeth was originally a good 
man, the only flaw in whose character was a cer- 
tain lack of determination through which he was 
led astray by the weird sisters and his wife, this 
view has fortunately almost disappeared. How it 
ever came into existence is difficult to understand. 

" What beast was 't, then, 
That made you break this enterprise to me ? 

. . . Nor time nor place 
Did then adhere, and yet you would make ^^ 47 

both : 
They have made themselves, and that their 
fitness now 



1 66 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know 
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face. 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
Have done to this." 

Surely these words of Lady Macbeth are sufficiently 
explicit. The first suggestions of foul play came 
from Macbeth's own unscrupulous ambition. Tlie 
role of the weird sisters is strictly limited to 
promising success. 

When the time for action finally arrives moral 
scruples play no part whatever in the hesitation 
that ensues. Macbeth has found that 
the thought of murder to be committed 
in some distant future, and the actual consent of the 
will to its immediate execution, are quite different 
things. He is therefore compelled to go through 
an agony of conflict before he can " bend up each 
corporal agent to this terrible feat." But the con- 
siderations that give him pause are not regard for 
duty but fear of the '' bloody instructions which re- 
turn to plague the inventor." The world to come, 
which lies below the horizon line, he is willing to 
"jump." But he cannot free himself from fear of 
the vengeance that overtakes in this life the traitor 
and the murderer. He were resolved, if he could 
only be assured that the point of his knife would 
not be turned against himself. True, other and 
higher considerations enter his mind. For a 
moment the promptings of honor and loyalty are 



Virtue and Happiness 167 

allowed to hold the attention ; thereupon the graces 
of his sovereign present themselves and prepare 
to plead for the threatened life. But no, the old 
familiar counsellors push them aside and hasten 
to urge the danger to which he will subject him- 
self if he stirs the indignation of his countrymen 
by outraging their sympathies. 

After the crime has been committed the prevail- 
ing emotion is not sorrow for sin, but, as before, 
fear, fear of the dagger and the poisoned cup. It 
haunts him in his dreams ; it drives him to keep a 
paid agent in every house, and even persuades him 
to spy upon the cut-throats who do his work ; it 
hounds him on to ever new murders and atrocities. 
Between the murder of Duncan and the second 
meeting with the weird sisters fear is the domi- 
nant note of every soliloquy and of every dialogue 
with Lady Macbeth. 

I am not unaware that Coleridge finds in these 
utterances of a troubled mind indications of the 
activity of conscience.^ No grounds are alleged 
for his hypothesis, but in its favor might be urged 
the fact that Macbeth is a soldier whose bravery 
and address upon the field of battle had brought 
him the title and estate of the Thane of Cawdor. 
This fact, however, proves nothing. Much bravery 
is merely the insensibility of habit ; and use and 
wont which harden men to danger as they do to 
privation may leave them helpless in situations 
that are radically new. Hence the terror with 
1 Notes on Shakespeare : Macbeth. 



l68 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

which ghosts have always inspired even the bold- 
Cf Macbeth ^^^ natures. Coleridge's dictum, in fact, 
m. iv. 99- seems to have no other basis than the 
demands of his own transcendentalism 
which, discovering no direct traces of moral sen- 
sibility proceeds to read them into the text as best 
it can. 

Nevertheless, Macbeth is not absolutely without 
conscience, though Coleridge does not succeed in 
identifying the indications of its existence. The 
Scotch nobleman is no mere echo of Richard III. 
or lago. In the mouths of neither of these 
worthies should we hear the words, " For Banquo's 
■ fic fiR issue have I filed my mind; " still less 
* those which follow, " For them the 
gracious Duncan have I murder'd." It is charac- 
teristic of the completely insensible criminal both 
in the real world and in Shakespeare's representa- 
tion of it^ that he looks upon his victim with 
contempt. Strength is all he admires, and the un- 
suspecting victim is in his eyes weak and stupid. 
It is of great significance, therefore, that Macbeth 
has not lost all his admiration for the childlike 
innocence of his king even when actually coupled, 
as it seems to have been in this case, with a lack 
of force. Equally significant is the farther fact 
that Macbeth calls his crimes by their proper 
names, " murder," " treason," " this hangman's 
[butcher's] hands." For this habit, since it is 
not the cynicism of the moral imbecile, removes 

1 Bichard III. and lago. 



Virtue and Happiness 169 

him from the class of lago as certainly as it does 
from that of the half-hardened criminal who in 
wilful blindness calls theft " purchase." 

Nevertheless, Macbeth is a man without real 
scruples, although faint images of restraining 
voices sometimes chime upon his inner ear. What 
moral sensitiveness he possesses is only sufficient 
to enable him to enjoy coddling himself for his 
regret at his unfortunate conduct, to make of him 
a sentimentalizing dealer in fine phrases. He can 
tell us that treason has done its worst ; he can bid 
seeling night scarf up the tender eye of .. 

pitiful day at the very moment when he is 
completing his arrangements for a second murder. 
Macbeth's fine phrases about murdering innocent 
sleep, and the many companion utterances, sound 
like the musings of a sympathetic and poetically 
gifted nature who is sitting among the audience 
and watching the course of the action. Even this 
puts the case a little too strongly. A love of 
mouth-filling adjectives and of exaggeration for its 
own sake appears so frequently that we have to 
make a double discount upon everything he says. 
At bottom his sorrow at his own deeds is about as 
deep and lasting as that of the average play-goer 
at the misfortunes of last night's heroine. How 
could it be otherwise in one who believes himself 
doomed to centuries, probably an eternity, of suffer- 
ing, yet has so little power to realize the absent 
that he remains unmoved — certainly undeterred — 
by the prospect. We ought accordingly to trust 



lyo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Macbeth no farther than we should Wainewright, 
the essayist, or Lacenaire, the poet. If he could 
control his terror he would be able, like Lacenaire, 
to kill a man with as little compunction as he 
would drink a glass of wine ; and after the murder 
he would experience as little genuine remorse. 

It is not otherwise with Lady Macbeth. The 
emotions that she drowned in wine were fear that 
thoy might fail in their attempt, or be discovered 
before the traces had been removed. In order to 
show his newly acquired independence of character, 
her husband affects to keep from her the murder 
of Banquo till she may be able to applaud the 
accomplished deed. She is not so simple as those 
commentators suppose, who describe her as unable 
to see what is coming. Nevertheless, she makes 
no attempt to stay the murderous hand. The only 
expression of feeling that escapes her after they 
are started in their career is longing for the lost 
sense of security. 

" ' T is safer to be that which we destroy 
ni. ii. 6. Than by destruction dwell in doubtful 

joy." 

If there be any significance in these facts, Lady 
Macbeth is as bare of moral scruples as is her 
husband. 

It is widely believed that Shakespeare's play as 
it has come down to us is a torso, possibly wrecked 
by Middleton, that he might enhance its popularity 
by restoring it in accordance with the taste of the 



Virtue and Happiness 171 

times. If some such hypothesis be true, we must 
suppose many passages have been lost that would 
have thrown additional light upon the heroine's 
character. But since those we possess unite in 
telling the same story, we may feel confident that 
our interpretation correctly represents its main 
outlines. 

This paucity of data, however, has made it 
possible for another theory to grow up and main- 
tain its ground. According to it, Lady Macbeth is 
an unselfish and lofty nature, carried away for the 
moment to do violence to her permanent self by 
her love for her husband. The evidence for this 
view will not stand the slightest scrutiny. She 
loved, we are told, her husband, her father, and her 
child. Grant this, and nothing is proved. For 
while strong family affection is not common in the 
lower grades of criminality, it sometimes occurs.^ 
And have we not seen a callous murderer risking 
his life to save a cat ? Her love for her father, of 
which so much has been made, is certainly not in- 
tense enough to have any great effect upon her 
actions. Possibly we must believe her when she 
declares, 

" Had he not resembled .. 
My father as he slept, I had done 't." 

But this resemblance does not prevent her from 
placing the daggers where Macbeth cannot miss 
them ; from giving the signal for the deed ; from 

1 See above, p. 122. 



172 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

following her husband's retreating steps with 
strained attention ; from entering a room near the 
scene she would not witness in order to assure 
herself of the successful issue. She can even 
picture the murderer in the very act of striking the 
blow and at the same time remain calm enough to 
note that " the surfeited grooms do mock their 
charge with snores," 

Again, her fainting on the discovery that Macbeth 
has killed the two grooms has been interpreted as 
an indubitable sign of returning moral sensibility. 
Let us assume for the sake of argument that the 
swoon is genuine ; that the fact that she needs 
help at the exact moment when Macbeth begins 
talking too much is merely a matter of chance. 
Even so, the conclusion does not follow with neces- 
sity, for the incident is susceptible of several dif- 
ferent explanations. Macbeth's detailed description 
of the appearance of the murdered Duncan and the 
sleeping attendants, perhaps in connection with 
the disappearance of the effects of the wine, may 
have awakened her to a realizing sense of her 
position ; and the horror with which it inspired 
her may have been just that which she sought to 
banish by the wine.^ 

^ Tlie following passage from Feuerbach's work, already cited, 
describes a case so nearly parallel to the swoon of Lady Macbeth as 
here interpreted, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. Andreas 
Bichel. a day laborer, lured two young girls into his house and 
killed them, in order to sell their clothes. At no time after his 
arrest did he show the slightest trace of remorse ; and throughout 
his examination he maintained his self-control perfectly, except on 



Virtue and Happiness 173 

To be sure, Lady Macbeth, like her husband, can 
deal in very effective oratory. Witness the beau- 

the occasion to be described. He pleaded not guilty, and as there 
had been no witnesses of the crime, progress was at first very slow. 
For a long time the most that could be accomplished was to force 
him to the admission of one murder, for which the circumstantial 
evidence was overwhelming. But he so described the conditions 
that brought it about as to reduce his guilt to a minimum. Finally, 
in accordance with a Bavarian law framed for such exigencies, he 
was taken from the town in which the trial was being held to his 
native village. " He was first brought into the magistrate's ofiice. 
Immediately upon his entrance he was overcome by the thought 
that he was now at the place where the crime had been committed, 
and he was prevented from fainting only by being given some 
water. The judge addressed him in kind and sensible words : 
' You are now,' he said, ' in your native town, near your home and 
the scene of your crime. Confess the entire truth here and at 
once. You will be taken to your own home, you will see the 
corpses themselves.' But the culprit's will still remained stronger 
than even the powerful feelings that threatened to destroy con- 
sciousness. He persisted in the assertion that he knew nothing of 
the second corpse alleged to have been found in his dwelling. 

" Thereupon he was taken to his house. In the principal room 
lay upon boards the two mangled corpses. He was led to the first 
one. At this horrible sight he trembled in every limb ; the muscles 
of his face twitched ; his expression grew terrible ; he demanded 
water to moisten his lips and mouth. When asked whether he 
recognized the corpse, he answered in a hollow voice : ' No ; I have 
never before seen a corpse that has lain in the grave.' He was 
then led to the second one. He could now no longer stand up- 
right, but sank into a chair. His limbs trembled violently and his 
face was disfigured with hideous contortions. He now declared 
that he recognized this second body as Katherina Seidel. He was 
asked to explain his emotion at the sight of the first corpse. ' I 
trembled only for fear of the people,' was his answer. ' Who would 
not tremble under circumstances like these ? ' and persisted in his 
assertions of ignorance." Feuerbach, opus cit., p. 47. 

The emotion that overcame Bichel was fear, as is shown by a 
study of the entire case. The sight of his native village, then of 



174 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

tiful invocation beginning : " Come, you 
spirits that tend on mortal thoughts." 
But if this be a picture of a mind really battling 
with temptation, we must suppose either a very 
stupid dramatist or a very stupid woman. For if 
Lady Macbeth had ever learned anything from 
experience, she must have known that to keep pity 
from doing its work one must drive it from the 
mind by the thought of personal gain. The spirits 
should have been bidden to fill her mind with 
pictures of that future dignity to which she and 
her husband aspired, with an imaginative foretaste 
of the joys of luxury and power. As it stands, 
therefore, the entire address seems to me to have 
its source in the same temperament and character 
that produced her husband's poetic effusions. Out- 
bursts in this vein, to be sure, will hardly be ex- 
pected from a Goneril, but demonstrably they can 
come from a Lacenaire. They therefore prove 
nothing beyond the most rudimentary moral capac- 
ity, a capacity just sufficient for a touch of senti- 
mentalism. This particular ebullition does not 
even indicate a sentimentalism that is innate. As 
the only piece of declamation in which she is 
represented as indulging, — unless the remark 
about her father belongs in the same category, — 
it perhaps ought to be attributed to the principle 
that husbands and wives occasionally drop into 

his victims, brought home to his imagination for the first time the 
extent of his danger and the momentousness of the issues in the 
outcome of his trial. 



Virtue and Happiness 175 

each other's mannerisms by mere force of imita- 
tion. Hence, as soon as the necessity arose of 
summoning every faculty to the task of toning up 
the shattered nerves of her companion, she would 
find no difficulty in throwing aside this loosely 
worn habit. 

The conclusion of the whole matter is that 
Macbetli and Lady Macbeth are by nature proof 
against attacks of remorse. Some slight dis- 
comfort they may possibly feel for a time, but it 
will quickly wear off, leaving no trace behind. 
Armed as they are at this point, will they then 
escape unscathed in their war against their fellow- 
men? 

The murder of Duncan is in the past. Treason 
has done its worst. Macbeth is seated upon the 
throne and Lady Macbeth is queen of Scotland. 
She has succeeded ; her heart's desire is hers. But 
there is no joy in her soul, for peace has gone 
forever from her life. 



" Nought 's had, all 's spent, 
Where our desire is got without content : 
'T is safer to be that which we destroy 
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy." 



m. ii. 4. 



We must remember that Lady Macbeth was not 
a woman of great temperamental courage, as her 
husband erroneously supposed. Real fearlessness 
does not need to drink wine in order to make itself 
bold. It can look fate in the eye, and when the 



176 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

worst presents itself to the imagination it does not 
recoil with the cry : 

" These deeds must not be thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad." 

No, she was not insensible to the dangers that sur- 
rounded her from the day she entered upon the 
path of murder. They shook her frame ; there 
were moments, at least, when she thought it better 
to be dead than bear the agony of an uncertain 
future. But she possessed a heroic, an almost 
superhuman will. As long as she could act, even 
though she had ceased to share altogether the 
counsels of her lord, she merely suffered, but her 
emotions did not overthrow her. But when Mac- 
beth had gone into the field, and she was shut up 
in a castle condemned to inactivity, then the terror 
that had been locked up within her broke its 
chains. The mind gave way under the strain of 
anxiety and the tortured soul exhibited its hitherto 
hidden agony, not, indeed, in prophecy, but in remi- 
niscence. It is a single theme that we liear when 
she comes before us for the last time : a little 
water will not clear her of this deed. What then ? 
They will be discovered ; and again and again she 
lives through the fearful scenes in which her hus- 
band's weakness threatens to mar all, and her resolu- 
tion must be the source of his self-control as well as 
her own. When the knocking at the castle gate 
broke the silence of the night, when the disordered 
imagination of her husband conjured up the ghost of 



Virtue and Happiness 177 

Banquo, she seemed calm and self-possessed. But 
now we know what storms were sweeping through 
her mind, what storms have visited it since. 

The common opinion that the sleep-walking scene 
represents the workings of remorse is entirely 
gratuitous, quite apart from the view we may take 
of Lady Macbeth's character. A few of its expres- 
sions may be so interpreted ; none of them must 
be ; a majority cannot be. The dominant note is 
plainly fear, fear that Macbeth will mar all by his 
agitation, fear that these hands of hers can never 
lose the telltale mark of blood. It is noteworthy 
that Schiller, whose Kantian preconceptions were 
the only assurance he needed that this must be a 
representation of remorse, — it is noteworthy that 
Schiller, when he came to translate this passage, 
found himself compelled to embody his interpreta- 
tion in language that has no counterpart in the 
original. In Shakespeare's text the physician says : 

" Foul whisperings are abroad : unnatural 

deeds 
Do breed unnatural troubles : infected 

minds 
To their deaf pillows will discharge 

their secrets." 

These lines Schiller translates : 

" Unnatilrlich ungeheure 
Verbrechen wecken unnatiirliche 
Gewissensangst, uud die beladne Seele beichtet 
Dem tauben Kissen ihre Schuld. 
12 



V. i. 79. 



lyS Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

If we read this scene as Shakespeare •wrote it, we 
shall find no evidence of G-ewissensangst. 

The " lesson" to be drawn from Macbeth, there- 
fore, is not that remorse will come; that, as we 
have seen, will depend upon the development of 
the moral nature. What is represented is the 
terror of those who set themselves up as the enemy 
of mankind. It filled Lady Macbeth's waking 
thoughts with scorpions, it tortured her nights with 
timorous dreams. About her is the struggle to 
keep from her enemies' grasp what she by vio- 
lence has seized ; before her lies the day when one of 

them will finally succeed. If it be true 
J ". ■ that " they lose [the world] that do buy 

it with much care ; " if it be true that 
Othello m. u riches fineless is as poor as winter to 

him that ever fears he shall be poor,'* 
Lady Macbeth has lost in the game of life. She 
goes to her death weak, poor, and broken in spirit. 
This is no fancy picture, created to frighten the 
bad and edify the good. Whether it was suggested 
by the description of the life of the tyrant in Plato's 
Republic, or by some account of the careers of the 
famous Italian despots, cannot be determined. 
At all events, it is a faithful representation of fact. 
John Addington Symonds writes : " The life of 
the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. 
Immured in strong places on high rocks, or con- 
fined to gloomy fortresses like the Milanese Castello, 
he surrounded his person with foreign troops, pro- 
tected his bed-chamber with a picked guard, and 



Virtue and Happiness 179 

watched his meat and drink lest they should be 
poisoned. . . . He had no real friends or equals, 
and against his own family he adopted an attitude of 
fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues 
to which he was exposed. His timidity verged 
on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of Naples, he 
was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled 
victims ; like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious 
fascination of astrology ; like Filippo Maria Yis- 
conti, he trembled at the sound of thunder,^ and 
set one band of body-guards to watch another next 
his person.2 He dared not hope for a quiet end. 
No one believed in the natural death of a prince : 
princes must be poisoned or poniarded. " ^ 

But then there are the intrepid. They think all 
men mortal but themselves, and cannot imagine 
the dagger as ever reaching them. Cowards may 
die many times before their death, but they face 
the inevitable end but once. Success they feel sure 
of ; it is their temperament to be optimistic. Who 
shall pluck the reward from their hands ? 

The art of the poet has shown us this, also. 
Originally, Macbeth was more timorous than his 
wife. At all events, if he felt no more fear, he had 
not her art of driving it from the mind when action 

1 Cf. Macbeth : " That I may tell pale-hearted rv i 85 

fear it lies, 
And sleep in spite of thunder." 

2 Cf. Macbeth, Act III., scene iii., line 1 ff. It will not be for- 
gotten that Macbeth, too, was visited by apparitions of the mur- 
dered, and that in his terror he resorted to the occult. 

8 The Age of the Despots, p. 118. 



1 80 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

was necessary. But he has received supernatural 
assurance of safety from a source that he never 
questions. He has, indeed, a war on his hands, but 
he is a soldier by profession. And has he not been 
told that he shall never be vanquished until great 
^ . „„ Birnam wood to hiah Dunsinane hill 

IV. 1. 92. ° 

shall come against him ? and that in 
victory or defeat none of woman born 
shall harm him ? Moreover, he has health and the 
possession of all his faculties, wealth, power, and 
the assured fame that follows in the train of the 
kingly office. What lacks he yet ? 

What lacks he yet ? Everything that makes 
life worth having, for his desire is got without 
content. Why without content ? He knows only 
too well. 

" That which should accompany old 

age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troops of 

friends, 
I must not look to have ; but, in their 

V. iii. 24. stead. 

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, 

breath. 
Which the poor heart would fain deny, 

and dare not." 

It was for pomp and power that he gave his soul 
to the common enemy of man. But the one can 
permanently amuse only a child ; the other he finds 
an empty word unless the obedience rendered be 



virtue and Happiness i8i 

prompted by loyalty and love. And this he can- 
not have. For it is the nature of moral evil to 
divide man from his fellow-man. The egoist thinks 
he is merely deciding at each point in his career 
whether he shall snatch this advantage or make 
that sacrifice. In reality, he is deciding whether 
he shall lead the broader or the narrower life. 
With every attack upon others he will grow at the 
same time more suspicious of his fellows and more 
indifferent to their interests. If continued, this 
attitude will extend to his friends, till finally even 
those he once loved best will become nothing to him 
except as they are instruments to some ulterior end. 
Thus he is drawing away from others at the very time 
when others are drawing away from him, till finally 
there will come a day when his isolation is complete. 
The bitterness of this last stroke was not with- 
held from Macbeth. Not but that his wife, and 
possibly some few others, may not have retained 
till the end their devotion to him. The tragedy 
of this man's loneliness lay in the fact that he had 
become incapable of any feeling of unity with them. 
They were now for him mere walking, gesticulating 
statues, incapable of speaking to the needs of his 
soul, and he was alone in this wilderness of lifeless 
forms. The causes of this final estrangement can, 
in part, be guessed ; in part they must remain 
forever unknown. Whether it was that prolonged 
misery had dulled Macbeth's sensibilities, and ren- 
dered him incapable of all strong emo- cf. V. v. 
tion ; whether it was that she, who was ^-^^- 



1 82 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

once nearest to him, had become in his eyes, like 
the rest, merely a dangerous tool ; whether it was 
that both husband and wife had wakened with a 
shock, fatal to love, from their illusions respecting 
each other, — who will venture to say ? Certain it 
is, at all events, that these are not bare abstract 
possibilities ; sooner or later, they must have come. 
The first two would have been merely the inevita- 
ble results of an unbridled egoism, and the condi- 
tions into which it had thrust him. The last 
derives its necessity from the special nature of the 
relation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. 

No careful observer can have failed to notice that 
this man and this woman had never really known 
each other. Misled by his sonorous phrases, she 
had thought him too full of the milk of human 
kindness to catch the nearer way ; she had thought 
him without the wickedness that should attend am- 
bition. Perhaps she was glad to be undeceived. 
But in the early days of their married life had she 
expected she would ever, waking or dreaming, 
have to say, " Fie, my lord, fie ! A soldier and 
af eared " ? And can a woman, even the most 
timorous, and such Lady Macbeth was not, retain 
her respect for the companion and protector whom 
she must thus address, not once, but over and over 
again ? 

Macbeth, too, had been disillusioned. What can 
he think of the judgment of the woman who, in 
the fatal moment of action, had spurred on his will 
with stinging words ? And can he forget that once 



virtue and Happiness 183 

he had believed her literally invulnerable to fear, 
and that in a burst of enthusiasm, he had hailed 
her as one whose " undaunted mettle 
should compose nothing but males " ? ' ' " 
Now, he finds her strong indeed, but not, as he had 
fondly imagined, immovably fixed. His respect, 
or at least his admiration for her, is gone, even as 
his respect for himself. And his love, be the 
reasons what they will, has forsaken him, too. He 
accordingly listens to the tidings of her death with 
grim indifference : If not at this time, y ^ i7_23 
she would have died hereafter ; fools 
are dying every day. 

Alas, for Macbeth ! Separated as he is from his 
kind by the prison walls of hatred, with no inspir- 
ing ideals, whether of service or character to give 
content to his life, he feels he has lived long 
enough. For if this be success, if it is to gain this 
that men put rancors in the vessel of their peace, 
then truly 

" Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor 
player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the 

stage L24. 

And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and 

fury, 
Signifying nothing." 

If it had come to this point, the catastrophe that 
overwhelmed him from without was really a release. 



184 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Truly, the wages of Macbeth's sin were death, 
death in life. 

Impressive as is this revelation of the inner life 
of the fear-free criminal, it will not completely 
satisfy those who demand an inseparable connec- 
tion between wickedness and misfortune. For it 
may with much plausibility be argued that Mac- 
beth's world-weariness and despair were the out- 
come of an idiosyncrasy of temperament. Such a 
complete collapse we should expect only where 
there was an active and unsatisfied longing to re- 
ceive, and perhaps even to give sympathy. This 
longing is not incompatible with complete selfish- 
ness. It is not infrequently found in the most 
crassly egoistic, showing itself among other ways 
in a preference for animal over human companion- 
ship ; the former being chosen because it involves 
no serious counter-demands. The existence of this 
trait in Macbeth is inferable from what I have 
called his sentimentalizing. His mind in playing 
with the picture of itself as caring for others, be- 
trays its craving for their interest in its own 
welfare. But, it may be argued, the hunger for 
fellowship cannot be a necessary constituent of 
human nature. In some men it appears to be non- 
existent; in others, rudimentary. Is not this 
appearance fact ? 

Problems of possibilities, it must be obvious, 
do not belong within the province of the drama, 
whose function it is to mirror certain, necessarily 
narrow, areas of the existent. We jaiay infer 



Virtue and Happiness 185 

with much plausibility, however, that Shakespeare 
considered the desire for sympathy an all but uni- 
versal phenomenon, appearing often like subter- 
ranean streams in the most unpromising places. 
He found it in a man like Richard III. : 

" I shall despair. There is no creature 

^ Bichard III. 

loves me : ^ ^ ^^ 

And if I die, no soul shall pity me." 
He found it in Gloucester's ruthless son : 
" Yet Edmund was beloved ! " ^'^lld 

This hunger may be forgotten in the first en- 
thusiasm over some newly won success; but in 
the barren days between great events, most of all 
in the periods of depression and failure that spare 
no man, it will return. These few touches of the 
artist's brush, then, are a revelation of the bitter- 
ness of soul that overwhelms the base mind when 
the future looks black, when losses crowd upon 
him, when failure has laid upon him her iron hand. 
In these gloomy hours the unselfish may turn to 
extra-personal interests. The satisfaction of these 
will give content to their lives. But for the self- 
centred there is only unsatisfied craving. 

But however wide-spread the desire for human 
fellowship may be, Shakespeare seems to teach 
that it may occasionally fail. In lago, for instance, 
there is no trace of it. He knows nothing of 
family affection, of mutual confidences, helpful- 



1 86 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

ness, and brotherhood ; of delight in the service 
either of his general or the state. So much joy, 
of course, he can never possess. On the other 
hand, its absence does not appear to distress him 
in the least. Has he not, then, escaped his punish- 
ment ? May he not find life, on the whole, a very 
comfortable affair ? 

The answer to this question has not been left 
to conjecture. lago's mind harbors an inmate 
as sombre as discontent. The cynicism of this 
ruthless intriguer is not the active despair of 
virtue which we find in Hamlet, for apart from 
the fact that he has no love for it, he believes 
in its existence here and there, and counts upon 
it as one of the strings by which to pull his 
marionettes. His cynicism is rather contempt for 
the race as a herd of fools, often weak and always 
stupid, a contempt that has its source partly in 
the consciousness of his own powers, partly in 
his incapacity to look with sympathetic vision 
into the inner palpitating life of his less clever 
fellow-men. Nothing but warm and deep sym- 
pathies can save the superior person — or him who 
supposes himself such — from a distaste for his 
human environment as for the monotonous sandy 
fiats of a vast desert, in the midst of which fate 
has imprisoned him. For through the sympathies 
alone is revealed the significance and worth of that 
mingling of nobility and weakness, insight and 
error, struggle and torpor, joy and sorrow, that 
form the content of the commonplace life. lago's 



virtue and Happiness 187 

every word and deed testify to this corroding 
bitterness of soul. His existence is thus an essen- 
tially joyless one, lightened as it is only by an 
occasional gleam of satisfaction at his own acute- 
ness and strength of will. 

If lago had been dull of intellect he might, 
of course, have escaped this experience — at what 
cost I need hardly point out. Intellectual medi- 
ocrity accompanied by emotional and volitional 
barrenness has perhaps never attracted even the 
most superficial amateur in the art of living. 
Confining our attention, then, to the selfishness 
of intellectual endowment, we discover that an 
inexorable fate seems to have set before it these 
alternatives : the isolation of an unsatisfied long- 
ing for human fellowship ; the isolation of cynical 
contempt. The former, we are distinctly taught, 
will poison and reduce to less than nothingness 
the most brilliant outward success. Whether the 
latter finds adequate compensation in power, sta- 
tion, and luxury, has been left for the spectator 
to determine. If he agrees with the estimate 
placed upon them by those Shakespearean charac- 
ters who have learned their value from personal 
experience, his problem will not be difficult. 

The preceding study of the relation between 
wickedness and its harvest has brought before 
us the principal factors involved, in so far as 
S-hakespeare has described them. Whether there 
may not be some loop-hole through which guilt 
occasionally escapes, especially where it is com- 



1 8 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

mingled with a certain share of goodness, an 
inquiry that confines itself to his text cannot 
undertake to decide. What it can and does show 
is the nature of the most important tendencies 
at work, and the insignificance of the chance in 
favor of their neutralization. 

Our result is no copy-book morality, no smug 
assurance, Be good and you will be happy. The 
gentle Desdemona, all love, all service ; Horatio 
bending over the body of his dead friend ; Kent 
broken upon the wheel to which his devotion has 
bound him, — these are not happy. The leap 
from the principle that moral enthusiasm is, at its 
highest, a conditio sine qua non of happiness to 
the principle that it is a sufficient condition of 
happiness is so violent that it could hardly escape 
the attention of any unbiased observer. Accord- 
ingly, I should not think of giving a moment's 
consideration to such a doctrine if it had not 
been either tacitly assumed or expressly asserted 
by certain very " profound thinkers," and in 
particular by certain "profound" Shakespearean 
critics. 

For one who is willing to see things as they 
are, there can be no question of the fundamental 
value of a well-endowed intellect, especially in 
stirring times and in highly organized societies. 
Not only are the specific joys of the intellectual 
life, including the consciousness of intellectual 
power, forever closed to those who stand no higher 
than a Chinese coolie; it is equally certain that 



virtue and Happiness 189 

tact, — one-half of which is sagacity, — keenness of 
observation, retentiveness of memory, and power of 
analysis and of inference, must be ranked among 
the important instruments for the attainment of 
the various goods of life. In Shakespeare's tran- 
script, their part is nowhere minimized. In the 
success of Henry Y. and the failure of Brutus ; 
in the mistakes of Cordelia and the misfortunes 
of Edgar and Gloucester ; in the tragic blindness 
of Othello; yes, in the wreck of Timon's faith, 
defects of intellect are fully as potent as sins 
of will. 

Nor is there any refusal, at least in the great 
masterpieces, to acknowledge the role of that incal- 
culable and intractable factor that men call chance. 
Its range, to be sure, is reduced to a minimum ; 
but such treatment would be demanded under 
any circumstances by the principles of dramatic 
art. The function of tragedy is to awaken awe 
(not fear, as Aristotle taught) and pity. Some- 
where within the length and breadth of human life 
we must therefore be brought into the presence of 
power. And of this the intellect and the will of 
man are the chief seat. Still more impressive, 
however, even though it terrify, is the revelation 
of power that we behold in those unbending 
resistless laws of life that enfold man and bear 
him onward to destruction. Before the sweep of 
these mighty energies the accidental must be kept 
in the background. Accident, to be sure, is not 
lawless. But it is the product of a confluence of 



ipo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

forces, the necessity for which usually cannot be 
seen, or at least realized. Furthermore, the acci- 
dental, as that which is occasional, lacks the massive- 
ness which gives power much of its hold upon the 
imagination. Tragedy, therefore, must use chance 
sparingly. But while Shakespeare minimizes to the 
utmost the influence of this factor, he does not and 
cannot entirely conceal it. The aged Lear craves 
love and sympathy. No one can help remember- 
ing that marriage with a different wife might have 
given him affectionate daughters, and that, as it 
is, if death had taken Goneril and Regan in their in- 
fancy, the old king never would have seen his train 
disquantitied, or been driven out into the night and 
storm. Illustrations of the principle are number- 
less. Consider one more. Not even an Alfred or 
a St. Louis is perfect. Evidently whether the flaw 
in their characters shall be fatal or relatively harm- 
less will depend upon circumstances. This appears 
with perfect clearness in Othello. Shakespeare 
has used every resource at his command to make 
Othello's fate the outcome of his character. His 
suspicions of Desdemona's unfaithfulness do not 
turn upon the chance loss of a handkerchief or the 
casual meeting of Cassio and Bianca. They spring 

from the hot impetuosity he drew from 
333-479. his barbaric ancestors. But these 

deadly forces might have remained 
quiescent forever if he had not hitherto been sur- 
rounded by honorable men, if he had known some- 
thing of women except by hearsay, or if lago had 



Virtue and Happiness 191 

taken service with Genoa rather than Venice. 
They might have been shut up in harmlessness had 
the Turkish fleet come down upon Cyprus and thus 
given Desdemona and Cassio time to clear them- 
selves. Even an accidental delay of five minutes 
in the commission of the murder might have 
brought the explanation that would have prevented 
the catastrophe. 

Life, as Mr, Spencer has taught us, is an ad- 
justment of inner to outer relations. Thus it is 
possible for the external factor, which we have 
been calling chance, to take the precedence in 
determining individual fate. Shakespeare's one 
illustration of this in the field of tragedy is the 
youthful work, Romeo and Juliet. But in bring- 
ing danger and trial to a happy termination he 
does not hesitate to show what it can do. In All 's 
Well that Ends Well the virtues of Helena would 
have had no room in which to work, had it not 
been for a series of very unusual though doubtless 
possible accidents. In Cymbeline the lovers, and in 
The Winter's Tale parents and daughter, are re- 
stored to each other by a chain of circumstances that 
genius and heroism could never by themselves have 
forged. While, if any concatenation of chances 
could be appropriately used as an illustration for 
the text, "Fortune brings in some boats Cym. iv. 
that are not steer'd," it would be the ^- ^^■ 
disclosure of the intrigue in Much Ado about 
Nothing through the collision, so to speak, between 
loquacity and simplicity under the dripping eaves of 



192 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Leonato's palace. In life as in whist, what is given 
from without has a part in the result. 

The only way to avoid this conclusion is to 
maintain, with Job's friends, that the fortunate are 
really the righteous (nowadays they call themselves 
" the fittest"), the unfortunate are really the wicked. 
This style of exegesis, when applied to the minor 
characters of Macbeth, for instance, leads us to 
such conclusions as the following : " The gracious 
Duncan falls, obviously not without being himself 
to blame for his fate, for whether the numerous 
revolts against his government, in the suppression 
of which Macbeth proved his heroism, were the 
result of arbitrary rule and injustice, or (as the 
source from which Shakespeare drew his subject 
has it) of unroyal weakness and concession, still, 
he is open to the reproach of not having properly 
fulfilled his duties as king. His sons are suspected 
of having slain their father, owing to their precipi- 
tate flight, which, though prudent, was unmanly, 
and have, therefore, to suffer banishment. Banquo, 
in self-complacent conceit, believes in the promises 
for his future good fortune, and thus brings de- 
struction upon his own head. Macduff's wife and 
children, lastly, suffer for the thoughtlessness of 
their natural protector, who, in thinking only of 
himself, and forgetful of his duty as father and 
husband, leaves them behind to secure his own 
safety. He is punished by their death, which at the 
same time is Lady Macduff's punishment for the 
unloving asperity with which she rails at her 



Virtue and Happiness 193 

husband's conduct, and thus gives us an insight 
into a marriage which was perhaps also a motive 
for Macduff's hasty and secret flight." ^ Examining 
this formidable list of casualties it will be impossible 
for the reader who has reached middle life to 
refrain from feeling highly flattered at finding 
himself alive.^ 

The preceding justification of the ways of Shake- 
speare with his characters is the fruit of German 
thoroughness. But the greatest achievement in this 
manner must be set down to the credit of Missouri, 
The untimely death of Desdemona is commonly 
looked upon as presenting some difficulties to the 
good-happy theory of life. Some thinkers have ex- 
plained it by pointing out that she told fibs ; others 
have reminded us that she disobeyed her father. 
But such considerations are either ignored or 
brushed aside by the St. Louis critic, for he has a 
profounder thought. The crime of Desdemona, he 
tells us, consisted in marrying a man of a different 

1 Hermann Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, Book IV. 
chap. iv. English translation by L. Dora Schmitz, Vol. I., p. 
474. 

2 The most ingenious part of this critique is undoubtedly the 
punishment of Macduff through the death of his children. Readers 
of John G. Saxe may remember a parallel case. Hoho of the 
Golden Belt was a high-born Chinese who murdered seven wives 
in succession on grounds of financial exigencies. Having been 
detected in his last venture, he was condemned by an unfeeling 
judge to be hanged. But through the interposition of his friends 
his punishment was graciously commuted by the Emperor to the 
decapitation of his three brothers, and the beating of his slaves 
three times a day for a month. 

13 



194 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

race.^ In fairness to Mr. Snider I ought to add 
that he does not for a moment suppose that the 
gentle Desdemona meant the least harm in the 
world. But he thinks that they who unwittingly 
ally themselves with the powers of evil must expect 
the same fate as the conscious seekers after wicked- 
ness. Possibly they must. But if right and wrong 
depend upon the intention, this is an arrangement 
which our sense of justice can never call moral. In 
fact, when Job's friends are reduced to such straits 
as this, they have practically given up their case. 

It is obvious whither our study has been leading 
us. Happiness requires the co-operating activity 
of two factors. The first is the desire or taste 
within ; the second is the means of satisfying 
or meeting it, which in the last analysis are sup- 
plied directly or indirectly by the physical or social 
environment. Accordingly the question of happi- 
ness can no more be decided by confining attention 
to the former condition alone than it can by an ex- 
amination of the latter. However, the environment 
commonly supplies a certain minimum of material. 
In such cases deep and wide-spreading moral and, 
if possible, intellectual interests, united with the 
patience, self-control, and skill to make the most 
out of our store, afford an apparent independence 
of externals, and thus promise a happiness that no 
storm shall be able to sweep away. This promise 
will be fulfilled in the great majority of instances. 

1 Denton J. Snider, System of Shakespeare's Dramas, Vol. I. 
p. 104 ff. 



Virtue and Happiness 195 

But we cannot lay down a universal law, for there 
is a mysterious exception. Shakespeare has shown 
us that there is a condition in which no internal 
worth, no gift of genius, no harmonious adjustment 
of outer resources to inner needs and wishes can 
avail to give contentment or inspire the desire to 
see to-morrow's sun. 

The representation of this fact we owe to the 
difficulties in which the poet involved himself by his 
habit of using as material for his plots old stories 
that had caught the popular fancy. Of all prepos- 
terous fabrications that he ever deigned to employ, 
those that form the basis of the Merchant of Venice 
are the most absurd ; and among these the prize for 
inanity must certainly be awarded to the story of 
the pound of flesh. It assumes that an experienced 
man of affairs, possessing a credit that would have 
given him his choice of terms, accepts a loan from 
a money-lender whose obvious aim in the transac- 
tion is to get a chance to murder him by due pro- 
cess of law. Or, if this interpretation be rejected on 
the ground that Antonio would naturally suppose 
he would have no difficulty in paying off the debt, 
the assumption must be that a thoroughly honor- 
able man enters into an arrangement by which he 
plans to obtain a loan without interest from an 
acknowledged enemy. 

We are furthermore required to believe that as 
the report of one disaster follows upon another, 
this practical business man neither makes an effort 
to communicate with his friend a few miles distant 



196 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

— who in his new-found happiness has forgotten 
his benefactor, — nor consults a lawyer, nor (ap- 
parently) makes any attempt to borrow money 
from professional money lenders or from the 
brother merchants whom he had himself so often 
assisted. We may indeed suppose that he ap- 
proached his friends and was unsuccessful, as 
Timon was ; but this hypothesis would introduce 
a tragic element into the drama which I think 
lay outside of the intention of the poet. Besides, 
it would not help in the least. For it is absurd to 
suppose that no money lender could be found, if not 
in Venice, then elsewhere, who could be induced to 
lend him a comparatively small sum — fifty thou- 
sand dollars in present values — at a rate of interest 
high enough to cover the risk. Even this is not a 
complete statement of the absurdities of the situa- 
tion, but I forbear. 

These manifold difficulties are overcome by a 
device than which nothing simpler could be im- 
agined. Antonio is represented at the opening 
of the play as overclouded with a profound mel- 
ancholy. He is weary of life, and cares nothing 
to draw out a joyless existence to a greater length. 
He has too much principle to deliberately seek 
death; but if chance will have him killed then 
chance may kill him. The situation, it may be re- 
membered, recurs in As You Like It, 
1. 11. 

195-205. and again in Cymbeline, a fact that will 

y. i. 22-83 ; not surprise the reader who has noticed 

the frequency with which a device is 



Virtue and Happiness 197 

repeated that has once proved effective. I must 
add that the idea need not have been original with 
Shakespeare. If he had read Montaigne's Essays 
either in the original or in the unpublished manu- 
script of Florio's translation, he may have been 
familiar with the passage in which the acute 
Frenchman, echoing, no doubt, a suggestion of 
Xenophon, clears up a somewhat similar incident 
which has occasioned much perplexity. " In 
observing the wisdom of Socrates and many cir- 
cumstances of his condemnation," writes Mon- 
taigne, " I should dare to believe that he himself, 
by collusion, in some measure purposely contrib- 
uted to it; fearing by a longer life, he having 
then reached his seventieth year, to see his lofty 
mind and universal knowledge cramped and stupe- 
fied by old age." ^ 

In converting the string-pulled puppet of the 
Italian story into a living creature of flesh and 
blood, Shakespeare has done more than supply one 
of his characters with an intelligible motive for 
walking into an open trap ; he has negatived — 
whether he knew it or not — the universality of a 
certain theory of life. Antonio has wealth, friends, 
social and business position, and an outlet for his 
energies through commercial transactions that 
carry his thoughts to the four corners of the world. 
He impresses us as being a man of culture, and his 
generosity to all that needed help in Venice speaks 
of a life enriched by the enthusiasm of humanity. 

1 Essays, Book III., chap, ii., sub Jin. 



198 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

By all the rules, he ought to be happy ; yet he is 
sad and knows not why. "We attempt to explain 
this mysterious fact by a reference to temperament, 
a word which, in the main, marks our ignorance. 
But this we do know : with some, unmotived mel- 
ancholy is a companion through life ; with others, 
as Antonio, it comes without warning from a clear 
sky, and may again as unexpectedly disappear. 
Where it abides, intellectual endowment, cultivated 
tastes, and character, are as powerless to produce 
real joy in existence as is wealth or any other stock 
target of the conventional moralist. 

In facing this fact, the correlative truth will, of 
course, not be forgotten. There are men of small 
intellectual and moral calibre, harassed, it may be, 
by financial troubles or ill-health, stripped of friends 
through the incursions of death, whose cheerfulness, 
nevertheless, flows on like a great river. The bar- 
ren lands through which they journey glow with a 
light that comes all from within. And as they 
look back upon what we should call life's rough 
and lonely way, they declare they would gladly 
travel the same road a second time. Such persons 
do not appear in Shakespeare's plays, for he has 
no room for detailed studies of commonplace men 
or commonplace lives. Falstaff we cannot consider 
an example ; for, apart from other objections, he 
seems to be gay rather than happy. Perhaps the 
nearest approach to the type is the rogue, Autoly- 
cus, in The Winter's Tale. But he is nothing more 
than a sketch ; so that whether his jokes and his 



virtue and Happiness 199 

songs stand for mere gayety, or for childlike, un- 
motived joy in being alive, we cannot determine. 
The sunshine in the faces of the best among the 
southern negroes of the last generation shows how 
little in the way of outer accessories or inner re- 
sources these natures require. 

Out of the complicated mass of details that have 
passed before our view, the law of the correlation 
between character and welfare emerges with un- 
mistakable clearness. Evil-doing tends to loss, 
reckoning values as even the evil-doer himself 
would estimate them. Even where the result is 
not " outer " failure, we may expect to find a life 
poor in compelling and satisfying interests, bare of 
enthusiasm, haunted by a sense of isolation. On 
the other hand, the tendency of virtue is exactly 
the reverse, if by virtue be understood active de- 
votion to moral ideals, and not the mere frigid 
respectability that is content with a negative stain- 
lessness. Other things being equal, the man vivi- 
fied and inspired by these ideals will attain success 
where the evil-minded and the lukewarm miscarry. 
And even when the success that the crowd strug- 
gles for is missed, or when fortune checkers the 
journey with suffering and disappointment, other 
tendencies are at work in his favor. In so far as 
he habitually dwells within the circle of other men's 
lives, his sorrows are divided, his joys multiplied ; 
and his interests, by their mere extent, assume a 
fixity and a security unknown to him who risks 
his all in a single ship. However, here, as in the 



200 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

case of health, culture, and every other good, we 
can speak of nothing more inevitable than tenden- 
cies. In the intricate, close-woven web of life no 
thread runs straight. The conjunction is more 
nearly universal, however, for wickedness than for 
virtue, because it requires a smaller combination 
of conditions to make us miserable than to make 
us happy. Thus it comes about that the laws 
which link consequences with conduct are more 
easily discoverable in the life of a criminal than in 
the life of a saint. 

In the commentary of Gervinus we may read 
that Richard III. came to grief " in consequence 
of the merited justice and due punishment of God," 
This seems to mean that he was cut off by an 
arbitrary interference with the order of things on 
the part of an external omnipotent Agency. That 
doctrine was not derived from the text. For the 
gory drama that came from the hands of the youth- 
ful Shakespeare distinctly teaches that, given man 
as he is, it lies in the very nature of moral evil to 
react upon the perpetrator with effects similar in 
kind to those which issue from his own will. And 
as the young dramatist gains in power and insight, 
and the human world in its completeness begins to 
take form under his magician's wand, he shows 
that the laws which make the evil-doer "merely 
All's WeU his own traitor " depend upon the in- 
IV. iii. 25. most Constitution of man as a social 
being ; that they hold, whatever view we may take 
of human origin or destiny ; that they no more 



Virtue and Happiness 201 

need regulation from without to assure their con- 
tinued working than do the laws of physiology ; 
that we are not called upon to have faith in them, 
but have only to shake ourselves free from the 
mental sluggishness into which we allow ourselves 
to sink, and see them for ourselves. 

It is now possible to answer, in part, at least, the 
third of the great problems forced upon our atten- 
tion by the phenomena of moral imbecility.^ To 
the conscienceless, the good man's ideals of con- 
duct necessarily seem absurd and contemptible, 
the good man a stupid weakling. Dostoieffsky 
writes of a noted bandit, a fellow-convict with him 
in his Siberian prison : " I tried once or twice to 
speak to Orloff about his exploits ; this was evi- 
dently a sore point with him, but nevertheless he 
always answered me readily. But when it dawned 
upon him that I was appealing to his conscience, 
his whole manner changed at once ; he stared at 
me with an expression of mingled pride, contempt, 
and even pity, as if I had suddenly become in his 
eyes a miserable, silly little boy, to whom he could 
not talk as he would have done to a grown-up man. 
A moment later he burst into a good-humored 
laugh, and I am afraid that he may often have 
laughed at the remembrance of my words." ^ It is 
in this spirit that the royal brigand, Richard III., 
adds to the blessing of his mother the ironical epi- 
logue, " and make me die a good old Richard m. 
man." It is possible, we see, to meet ^^- "• ^^' 

1 See above, p. 131. * Buried Alive, chap. iv. 



202 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

contempt with contempt, and if Albany may say 
Lear IV. ^^ Goneril, " Wisdom and goodness to 
ii- 38. the vile seem vile," it will be quite in 

Cf . Dionyza her spirit to reply : " Wisdom and 
in Pericles goodness to the milk-livercd and the ser- 
IV. iii. 49-51. ^., , Ji • . 4. .. ,■> 

Vile seem absurdly important matters. 
Who, then, is right, or are both equally right, each 
from his own point of view ? 

Contempt is the reaction upon supposed weak- 
ness, whether of intellect or of will. That perfec- 
tion of character means not weakness of will but 
power has already been shown.^ That the evil- 
doer who kills his better impulses is an intellectual 
weakling should now be evident. For if it is the 
part of wisdom to guide oneself by probabilities, 
then the evil-doer in choosing the worse has taken 
the foolish part. I do not say he will discover that 
he might have done better. What he will find is 
that the world is a dreary place for such as he, 
and its promises lies. Meanwhile those he calls 
fools have placed themselves in the way of obtain- 
ing the good gifts which wait for those who are 
warm of heart and strong of will. Compare the 
career of Henry V. with that of his father ; com- 
pare the life of Prospero with that of lago. The 
former in each case contains not merely more to 
admire but, quite apart from the joy of possessing 
the admirable, more to satisfy. Moral laws, then, 
possess at least this much objectivity : they are the 

1 See above, p. 18 ff. 



Virtue and Happiness 203 

laws of both individual and social welfare in the 
widest sense of the term. Whether they possess 
or indeed require objectivity in any other sense is 
a problem that lies beyond the boundaries of our 
inquiry. 



CHAPTER YIII 
ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS 

We have now completed our survey of the moral 
life so far as Shakespeare can serve as guide. But 
our studies, especially our studies in crime, have 
left us with problems more tremendous and, to 
many persons, more insistent than any we have as 
yet considered. The world-old perplexities about 
non-moral and moral evil, — failure, and suffering, 
and wickedness, — have forced themselves upon 
our attention and press for solution. 

The place and function of evil in the world is a 
subject that evidently lies outside the sphere of 
descriptive ethics. We may talk glibly — and cor- 
rectly, too, — about adjustment to the needs of ex- 
istence. But why, we must go on to inquire, were 
not the conditions of existence so arranged that 
those fitted for survival should be at the same time 
fitted to live a thoroughly satisfactory life, and to 
play their part in a perfect social order. To an- 
swer such questions we must know the purpose of 
the universe, or whether it really has a purpose. 
We must know whether this passing life is a part 
of a larger whole. ^ Most of all we must know 
whether there is a Providential government of the 



Ethics and Metaphysics 205 

world. We are learning that all is law : may we 
believe with similar confidence that all is love ? If 
this great question can only be answered in the 
affirmative we can let the other puzzles go. The 
solutions of the problem of evil offered from time 
to time by " God's spies " may make us smile ; but 
faith will now serve instead of knowledge, and we 
shall feel that we can afford to wait. Thus does 
ethics lead up to the supreme problem of meta- 
physics. Thus does our own study lead up to the 
question : What does Shakespeare teach about the 
nature of ultimate reality ? 

If we think it worth while to attempt an answer 
to this question we must realize that our inquiry 
has been given a different direction from that 
which it has been following in the preceding 
chapters. There we were studying the results of 
the dramatist's observations. What generaliza- 
tions he formed on the basis of the material he 
collected, or whether he sought to classify and 
arrange it at all, did not concern us in the least. 
Here, on the other hand, the man behind the work 
is everything. What he thought about an order of 
reality inaccessible to observation has become the 
object of investigation. 

Since the days of Kant it has been generally 
agreed that all metaphysics must rest upon a theory 
of knowledge. That is to say, before attempting a 
solution of the problem of the nature and constitu- 
tion of the supersensible, we must take stock of 
our intellectual resources, must ask ourselves 



2o6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

whether there are means at our disposal for accom- 
plishing our purpose. In like manner we shall do 
well to preface our own special inquiry with a few 
prolegomena to every future system of dramatic 
hermeneutics. "We must ask how a writer of plays 
can disclose his views on matters metaphysical, 
provided he makes use of no medium of expression 
but the stage. Lack of thought on this subject 
has been the ruin of many a beautiful system of 
Shakespearean theology. 

The first device which suggests itself is that 
employed by Goethe in Faust. The play opens, 
we remember, with a prologue in heaven that shall 
justify the ways of God with the tempted and err- 
ing seeker for life's summum bonum ; it closes 
with the reception into Paradise of the same soil- 
stained traveller, who through his many wanderings 
had been ever dimly conscious of the direction of 
his goal. But this very example shows how fal- 
lacious may be any inference from the creation to 
the mind of the creator. Only in the vaguest and 
most shadowy fashion do the introduction and con- 
clusion of Faust represent Goethe's beliefs. And 
it is not essentially inaccurate to maintain that 
these scenes meant neither more nor less to him 
than did the Norse mythology to the composer of the 
Ring des Nibelungen. Hence, when we see the 
supersensible represented upon the stage we are 
bound to ask first, what is its artistic significance, or 
what facts of this life does it symbolize ? Further- 
more, the dramatist knows we must ask it. If it 



Ethics and Metaphysics 207 

have such significance, if it symbolize non-meta- 
physical truths, we have no criterion for determin- 
ing how much is creed and how much is art. 

The application of this principle to our own 
problem is obvious. On the wind-swept platform 
before the Castle of Elsinore appears a visitor from 
another world. What does this apparition mean ? 
At least this much : though one rise from the dead, 
Hamlet cannot be moved to action. A short time 
will pass and the impression that made his brain 
reel will have retained only so much force as to 
make him uneasy in his inactivity. Within a week, 
or possibly a fortnight, a gentleman of Normandy 
will arrive in Denmark, bringing remarkable re- 
ports from Paris of Laertes' skill with the rapier. 
At once emulation will suggest to Hamlet a wel- 
come substitute for duty. And from that time 
forth, while his father's spirit is waiting impa- 
tiently for the promised vengeance, he will spend 
his days in continuous practice to become the 
equal of a careless young gallant in swordsman- 
ship.^ This midnight vision thus tells us nothing 

^ These facts are obtained by comparing Act IV., scene vii., 11. 
71-106, the dialogue between the king and Laertes, with what 
Hamlet himself says to Horatio in Act V.j scene ii., 1. 220. The 
time can be determined in either of two ways. First from Hamlet's 
words : " Since [Laertes] went into France I have been in con- 
tinual practice." Laertes left Denmark on the same day on which 
the dead king's ghost appeared to Hamlet. Second : Laertes and 
the king form their plot against Hamlet's life within a very short 
time after the presentation of the Murder of Gonzago by the 
players. This was four months after King Hamlet's death, as 
appears from Act III., scene ii., 1. 136. The interval between the 
death of the king and the interview upon the castle platform, was a 



!2o8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

of Shakespeare's beliefs about a life beyond the 
grave. For whether it be thought to represent in 
itself fact or fancy, it belongs where it is in virtue 
of its artistic effectiveness and the revelation it 
affords of Hamlet's character. 

There is, however, one way in which a dramatist 
can stamp unequivocally his confession of faith 
upon the products of his imagination. That 
doughty old gladiator, Ben Jonson, never left auditor 
or reader in a moment's doubt about certain of his 
metaphysical views. That he regarded atheism as 
a contemptible hypothesis, and that he rejected 
totally the puritan theory of salvation, are witnessed 
by the abuse heaped at every turn upon the 
adherents of these doctrines. A thoroughly objec- 
tive dramatist, however, would be incapable of such 
enormities. Shakespeare, for instance, never per- 
mits one character after another to indulge in 
wholesale abuse of any class of men, except in the 
case of the " mob." And even the unpleasant im- 
pression left in our minds by the wearisome girding 
at the many-headed multitude is mitigated by the 
sympathy uniformly exhibited in his treatment of 
the humble and commonplace individuals whose 
coming together forms its substance. 

Theological beliefs Shakespeare never attacks 
through their adherents. It is, indeed, quite gener- 

little less than two months (see Act I., scene ii., 1. 138). If, there- 
fore, we subtract the two months that have elapsed since the arrival 
of the Norman {IV., vii., 82,) we can hardly date it at a point more 
than a fortnight removed from the night on which Hamlet received 
his commission. 



Ethics and Metaphysics 209 

ally supposed that in Malvolio and Angelo puri- 
tanism is held up to ridicule and contempt. But 
no assumption could be more arbitrary. Angelo 
is not an ordinary hypocrite, as is often asserted. 
He is a man who thinks himself a servant of con- 
science, whereas in reality he is merely a slave of 
respectability. The possession of unlimited power 
reveals his true character to himself as it does 
to the world. But were he Tartuffe himself, it 
would not follow that some one else must be 
a whited sepulchre. Least of all that the doc- 
trines of predestination and absolute decrees must 
be false. Malvolio, again, is drawn without a trace 
of bitterness. It would make no difference even 
if he were not, for he is declared not to be a puri- 
tan. " Sometimes he is a kind of puritan," says 
the sharp-tongued Maria. " 0, if I t, n. ii. 
thought that, I 'Id beat him like a dog ! " ^- i5i. 
replies Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Indeed, the tradi- 
tional view as to the tendency of this piece of 
characterization turns the facts topsy-turvy. For 
surely if to be pilloried by a fool is the highest 
form of praise, no eulogy upon a religious sect 
could have been more flattering than Sir Andrew's 
abuse. 

A dramatist, however, might make use of another 
device for presenting his own metaphysical views. 
He could exhibit them as the beliefs of his best 
and wisest characters. This does not differ in 
principle from Ben Jonson's method, but in actual 
operation it is at least compatible with decency. 

14 



2IO Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

According to what seems to be at present a wide- 
spread opinion, Shakespeare availed himself of this 
device. And if we may believe some intelligent 
men who claim to have either read or seen the 
plays, he used it to recommend theological and 
metaphysical agnosticism. Waiving for the pres- 
ent the more general assertion, let us consider 
the proposition that Shakespeare's most completely 
rounded characters are skeptics. 

This statement, in the form in which it usually 
appears, can be shown to be baseless. Brutus — 
to begin with the opening play of the third period 
— seems to have shared with the contemporaneous 
Stoics their uncertainty about a future life. But 
we have no ground to question his confession of 
faith in " a providence of some high powers that 
J. c. govern us below." To be sure, a false 

V. i. 107. conception of honor does not permit 
him to act upon it in the decisive matter of taking 
his life. But in this respect he differs not at all 
from many a duellist of a later age, nor, indeed, 
from the high-minded Hector, who also, as may 
be remembered, prefers the good opinion of others 
before an acknowledged duty. 

The reputation of Hamlet as the typical doubter, 
the imaginative incorporation of the spirit of 
Montaigne, is one of the most extraordinary vaga- 
ries of Shakespearean criticism. Here is a man 
whose fate turns upon a visit from a disembodied 
spirit ; a man who is expected by his father to 
count it a double wrong for the victim of assas- 



Ethics and Metaphysics an 

sination to be cut off in the midst of his sins, with 
no chance to purge his soul by the ministrations 
of the priest ; a man who fears no ghost, because 
he can say : 

" And for my soul, what can it do to that, Hamlet I. 
Being a thing immortal as itself ? " iv- 66. 

a man who, when the opportunity to discharge his 
commission thrusts itself upon him, succeeds in 
disguising to himself his own unwillingness to 
take the irrevocable step by the consideration 
that to kill one engaged in prayer is to send his 
soul to a better world ; a man so com- m. iii. 
pletely dominated by the religious view '''3-95. 
of life that he falls into the error of mis- cf. m. iv. 
taking the results of his own insight for ?2^P^^: 

. 1 • r. P IV. li. 12- 

the miraculous interference of Provi- 23, iv. iii. 

dence in his behalf. Truly, a skeptic of ^9'7^}} ^' 

^ u. 4-11. 

this kind would have little to fear from 

the fires of the Inquisition. 

What, then, lies upon the other side ? Nothing 
but an ambiguous phrase or two in the great solilo- 
quy of Act III. " To be, or not to be : " 
I have known intelligent men who 
understand this as the expression of a doubt about 
immortality. As a matter of fact, the context 
shows that Hamlet is here dallying with the 
thought of suicide. " To sleep : perchance to 
dream." Immortality, we are told, is 
here presented as nothing more than a 
bare possibility. Such, indeed, is the most natural 



212 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

interpretation of these five words when isolated 
from their context. And although the effect of 
the "perchance" seems to be neutralized by the 
subsequent treatment of the possibility as a factor 
sufficiently important to determine the direction 
of action, yet it must be confessed that the passage 
does not seem easy to harmonize with the explicit 
declarations of other portions of the text. Two 
explanations of the phrase are possible. One is 
that for the moment Shakespeare had forgotten 
Hamlet, and was bodying forth his own world- 
weariness, his own doubts, and fears, and long- 
ings for release. As the commentators have 
pointed out, there is much to commend this view. 
For instance, complaints about 

" The law's delay, 
L. 72. The insolence of office and the spurns 

That patient merit of the unworthy takes," 

sound rather oddly in the mouth of a prince, unless 

we suppose him to be taking an exceptionally ob- 

iective view of the evils of life. And, 

L. 79 

" the undiscover'd country from whose 

bourn no traveller returns," still remains, after all 
the ingenuity that has been expended upon it, an 
inappropriate expression for one who has seen his 
father rise from the grave. This hypothesis is thus 
not without some plausibility. But since its ac- 
ceptance would involve us in the inconclusive con- 
troversies of Shakespearean biography, we ought to 
try to get along without it. This seems perfectly 



Ethics and Metaphysics 213 

possible. For the diflficulties disappear if we as- 
sume that there are two Hamlets : the one confident 
as a parish priest of the truth of his religion ; the 
other a student of the world's thought, who some- 
times rubs his eyes in uncertainty whether his 
beliefs are dream or substance. The basis on 
which this hypothesis rests is far from being an 
impossibility. Some of the most thoroughly con- 
vinced Christians know moments of darkness, 
when the foundations of religious faith seem to 
be crumbling beneath their feet. We shall hardly 
count Alfred Edersheim a theological skeptic. Yet 
he makes this confession : " Let no one dare to 
say that the faith of John the Baptist failed, at 
least till the dark waters have rolled up to his own 
soul. For mostly all and each of us must pass 
through some like experience ; and only our own 
hearts and God know how death-bitter are the 
doubts, whether of head or of heart, when question 
after question raises, as with devilish hissing, its 
head, and earth and heaven seem alike silent to 
us." ^ Unless tlie dramatist has deceived us, such 
moods were but occasional in Hamlet. His pre- 
vailing attitude was one of faith. 

Not to weary the reader with more details to 
the same effect, we may pass on to the last of the 
" skeptics," namely Prospero. Every school-boy 
knows the lines ending, " our little life Tempest iv. 
is rounded with a sleep." This, it is ^- ^^'^^ 

1 Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. 
Vol. I., p. 667. 



214 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

asserted, can mean only that death ends all. If 
so, St. Luke must have been denying the immor- 
tality of the soul when, in describing the stoning 
of Stephen, he wrote : " When he had said this he 
fell asleep."^ When we speak of sleep we may 
think of the awakening after unconsciousness, or 
of the unconsciousness itself. Common fairness, 
therefore, ought to make us admit that Prospero's 
words are wholly ambiguous. With the recogni- 
tion of this fact there remains but one passage that 
even promises a clue to his beliefs about the super- 
I ii 169 sensible world. " We came ashore," he 
tells Miranda, " by Providence divine." 
But again hope fails. For you may interpret this 
as meaning just what it says, or you may assume 
that Prospero was talking down to Miranda because 
she was young and a woman. Whichever alterna- 
tive you choose, you will discover nothing in the 
rest of the play to disturb your convictions. 

We have assured ourselves, I trust, that we have 
no right to set down Shakespeare's best characters 
as uniformly skeptics. From this statement it 
may perhaps be inferred that they agree in holding 
certain positive theological and metaphysical doc- 
trines. This is a point that we shall proceed to 
investigate. 

The most prominent heroic figure of the sec- 
ond period of Shakespeare's dramatic career is 
Henry V. As Prince Hal he is a boy, and noth- 
ing more; but as king he represents devotion to 

1 Acts vii., 60. 



Ethics and Metaphysics 215 

God and joyful trust in Him, carried to the highest 
point attainable by the active temperament. This, 
it may be objected, was in the chronicle. So was 
much else that is rigorously excluded, as his un- 
pitying persecution of the Lollards and the plots to 
which it gave rise. Shakespeare used the chron- 
icles as Michael Angelo the quarries of Carrara ; 
he looked them over and took what suited his 
purpose. We must recognize, therefore, that it 
is by deliberate choice that Henry V, is presented 
as profoundly convinced of the truth of the funda- 
mental doctrines of Christian theology. 

The first great figures of the third period are 
Brutus and Hamlet. Brutus, we remember, exhibits 
belief in a providential government of the world, 
but he seems to have little or no faith in immor- 
tality. We hear nothing from him of a meeting 
with his friend in a future life, when anticipation 
would certainly have found expression. Hamlet, 
too, believes in a divinity that shapes our ends ; he 
believes his soul immortal. But there are moods 
in which life after death is little more than a 
" perchance." 

As we proceed the clouds grow blacker. A 
short time after the appearance of Hamlet, as most 
authorities agree, Measure for Measure was put 
on the stage. Its principal male character, the 
Duke of Vienna, must be considered, I think, a 
doubter or a positive disbeliever in a God of love 
and in immortality, in spite of an isolated m. for M. 
utterance which on the surface seems ^- *• *85-7. 



2 1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

to indicate the contrary.^ For when called upon 
to prepare Claudio for his supposed impending 
death he has no better consolation to offer than 
the prospect of deliverance from the evils of this 
life. There he stands in the guise of a priest ; the 
culprit before him believes in a life after death, for 
he shrinks back from the horrors of purgatory. 
Yet the duke can tell nothing of the grace of God, 
or the joys of heaven. He can only point to life 
as a thing that none but fools would keep, 
and death as a release from a painful, 
meaningless treadmill. 

The preceding conclusion was based upon a 
single datum. More abundant evidence meets us 
when we come to the study of King Lear's most 
perfect character. Those about Kent profess at 
one time or another their faith in an all-just Provi- 
dence ; Kent is silent. He finds himself in the 
Lear n. stocks. " Fortune, good night : smile 
ii. 180. once more ; turn thy wheel ! " is his 

comment. As we proceed, we discover that his 
" fortune " is the very negation of Pi'ovidence. 
„ ... «-^ Por if, in the phrase, " If fortune brag 

V. lu. 280. ' r J o 

of two she loved and hated," you re- 

1 If the position taken in the text is correct, the dnke in this 
passage must be understood as talking after the manner of the 
people. However, even if it could be shown that he believed 
nothing but fear of eternal punishment could restrain a criminal 
nature, it would not follow that he believed in the reality of such 
punishment. In Act II., scene iii., 11. 30-34, he is plainly speak- 
ing in his character as confessor. This attitude towards wrong- 
doing nowhere recurs in his lines. 



Ethics and Metaphysics 217 

place " fortune " by God, you get what is little 
short of blasphemy. Our last sight of Kent is 
when he comes to bid liis king and master aye 
good-night. If " aye " means anything, ... 
he is expecting a sleep that has no to- 
morrow's waking. After all, there is to be no 
farewell between them ; Lear is beyond that. When 
the last breath has left the weary body, Kent knows 
it is well with the old king. He is no longer 
stretched upon the rack of this tough world. But 
not a word falls from Kent's lips of a better land 
in which we shall meet with a recompense for our 
afflictions. 

Most of these facts have been noticed before ; but 
one circumstance has as yet, so far as I know, 
entirely escaped attention. Kent was not always 
an unbeliever. At the beginning of the play, when 
he is still one that fortune loves, he addresses his 
master : 

" Eoyal Lear, 
Whom I have ever honour'd as my king, 
Loved as my father, as my master fol- 

low'd, 
As my great patron thought on in my 

prayers." 

This is no mere conventional mode of speech, like 
" the gods reward your kindness ! " . 

or " God bless you." It is part of a 
solemn conjuration in which every word is intended 
to have its full value. Moreover, the prayers Kent 



I. i. 141. 



21 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

addressed to heaven, were no mere form. He is 
too honest, too single-minded, and too blunt to 
trifle with religious observances that mean nothing 
to him. Finally, one who could step between Lear's 
safety and his formidable wrath does not pray in 
order to be seen of men. Nor can the appearance 
of this expression be set down to accident. I know 
the casual reader of the plays will smile at this 
statement ; but there are no accidents in the great 
tragedies. Least of all in King Lear. In the 
compass of thirty -two hundred lines is told a story 
almost as full of incident as War and Peace, 
crowded with characters as clearly conceived and 
as completely developed as those of the Russian 
novel. These wonderful results are accomplished 
by an employment of suggestion that has no par- 
allel in literature. The effect of every word is 
carefully measured ; it always reveals something ; 
it may reveal much. What, then, is inferable from 
this innocent-looking phrase ? As a prosperous 
nobleman, Kent has never had any occasion to 
doubt the existence of Providence. Evil he must 
liave seen, but he has never known, or at any rate 
realized, its worst possibilities. Then comes over- 
whelming misfortune to one he loves, coupled with 
the revelation of malignant wickedness in those 
whom he has personally known. As a result, God 
has gone from his world. The sufferings and the 
heartlessness in his master's family cost him not 
only his life, but also his religious faith. 

Three or four years pass, and then, if a plausible 



Ethics and Metaphysics 219 

chronology be correct, appears a series of romantic 
dramas which practically close Shakespeare's ca- 
reer as an author. They are Pericles, Cymbeline, 
The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In these, 
especially in the first three, there is noticeable a 
great alteration in tone. Now, when suspicion 
casts its shadow over an innocent life, the vital 
forces are preserved from blight by faith in powers 
divine, through whom 

" Innocence shall make „ „ „, 

W. T. III. 
False accusation blush and tyranny ii 31 

Tremble at patience." 

When men are led to good by devious paths whose 
end, as they walked, could not be seen, they con- 
fess it is the gods 

" That have chalk'd forth the way Tempest V. 
Which brought us hither." i- 203. 

The human instrument of deliverance from evil is 
a minister of God. Gratitude for pro- pericies v. 
tecting care, submission under afflic- i"- 59-63. 
tion as " a punishment or trial," are the Pericles v. 

i. 200—201 ■ 

uniform attitude in either extremity of cym, y. v.' 
fortune. The passages cited are not 476-8. 
isolated utterances, acceptable to some, Cym. ni. 
repudiated by others. They represent w. T. v. i. 
the atmosphere in which all these men 171-174. 
and women habitually live. 

Our investigation thus shows us that the repre- 
sentative figures of Shakespeare's dramas are neither 



220 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

exclusively believers in a providential order nor 
exclusively skeptics. We discover, moreover, that 
if we arrange his works in their probable chrono- 
logical order, the metaphysical beliefs of these 
selected characters arrange themselves in a kind 
of Hegelian spiral. We pass from naive, unmedi- 
ated confidence, through doubt, to a certainty that 
has included and overcome its skepticism. 

What more natural than to infer from these facts 
the course of Shakespeare's own religious history ? 
As a man of thirty-five his mind is illumined, 
warmed, and vivified by a spontaneous, vigorous 
trust in God. Then, as the meaning and extent 
of human suffering and wickedness are revealed, 
there arise questionings, then doubts, then denial. 
His mind, like his works, is shrouded in gloom, a 
gloom pierced by no ray of light from a higher 
world. Finally comes deliverance. He reconquers 
the faith of his youth, though he holds it with a 
different spirit. Evil he now recognizes as a fact, 
but he sees in part, at least, how it can form an 
element in a divine plan. Justice and love rule 
the world, and we may believe they do all things 
well. 

Plausible as this inference from the work to the 
architect may seem, I cannot think we ought to 
allow ourselves to accept it. The structure of con- 
jecture is too large and heavy for the slight founda- 
tion of indisputable fact which is the best it is 
possible to supply. In interpreting the plays them- 
selves we may be less rigorous. Each of them is a 



Ethics and Metaphysics 221 

group of problems or puzzles, set for the spectator's 
pleasure and profit. The answers lie deep where 
the superficial and the indolent shall never find 
them. They will take Lady Macbeth's words, he 
" is too full 0' the milk of human kind- Macbeth i. 
ness to catch the nearest way," as the ^- ^^■ 
key to Macbeth's character. They will innocently 
believe that seasoned liar, the Duke of Vienna, 
when he tells Friar Thomas he is dis- m. for M. 
guising himself merely to watch the ^- ^- 19-54. 
enforcement of an unpopular law. No, the drama- 
tist is subtle and will let no one win the prize who 
is not willing to observe carefully, to think patiently, 
— and to pay for more than one ticket of admission. 
But it lies in the very nature of the game that the 
solution must not be beyond the reach of human 
ingenuity. We must have data in sufficient 
number, and none of them, when viewed in its 
proper relation to the rest, ought to be misleading. 
Therefore, in a properly constructed drama the 
most probable explanation of an action or character, 
even if it be only barely probable, is the true one. 
This holds even where the number of our data is 
ridiculously small, for we must believe we were 
given all we need. 

Not so in life. Nature has entered into no 
tacit agreement with us to preserve all that is 
required for the answers to our questions, and 
to provide a corrective for misleading facts. 
Hence the vanity of most attempts, considering 
the paucity of our data, to worm the secrets of 



222 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

Shakespeare's life out of his written "works. I 
do not claim that the plays reveal absolutely 
nothing about the mind and the experience which 
were their source ; here and there we may un- 
doubtedly detect the man in the pattern he is 
weaving. But I do maintain that the material 
brought together in the preceding paragraphs, or 
the material as yet presented by any other student 
of Shakespeare, is totally inadequate for the con- 
struction of a theory of his positive theological 
beliefs. 

Quite apart from this general ground for sus- 
pending judgment, the facts we have been passing 
in review are susceptible of more than one explana- 
tion. Even if they constrained us — as they do 
not — to the conclusion that at different periods 
the dramatist was specially interested in some one 
of the various phases of religious belief, a consider- 
able number of grounds for such interest could 
easily be suggested. Among these, acceptance, 
whether in part or whole, of the creed delineated 
can hardly urge an exceptional claim. Our pro- 
legomena, at least in so far as Shakespeare is con- 
cerned, must therefore close with a profession of 
ignorance. 

This secret we may never hope to pierce. But 
the poet's thought about the relation of belief in a 
providential order to the tasks and problems of 
every-day life he has recorded where all may read. 
He has shown, over and over again, the power of 
such belief to comfort, sustain, and strengthen the 



Ethics and Metaphysics 223 

soul in its conflict with calamity, passion, and public 
wrong. He has also affirmed with equal distinctness 
the possibility of living and conquering without it. 
There are men even to-day who are not ashamed to 
proclaim from the housetops their unwillingness to 
fight the good fight until assured of being on the 
winning side. In inspiring contrast to them stand 
certain of Shakespeare's characters who, cheered 
by no sure faith either in personal reward or the 
ultimate triumph of the good cause, deliberately 
range themselves on the side of right, and hold 
their allegiance in defeat as in victory. " Vic- 
trix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." " The 
gods took the side of the victorious cause, but 
Cato the side of the vanquished." This is the 
temper in which Brutus and Kent fought, en- 
dured, and died. 

Such men, Shakespeare saw, are facts. He was, 
furthermore, convinced that their judgments of 
value would still remain sound, the ends they pur- 
sued worth attaining, even if the universe should 
turn out to be nothing better than a lifeless 
machine. For if his tragedies are studies in fail- 
ure, failure does not consist for him, as it does 
and must for Dante and Bunyan, in losing the 
chance of heaven, whether through the omission of 
some rite, through entanglement in a plausible 
heresy, or through death in the midst of unrepented 
and unexpiated sin. Just as little does it consist 
in disobedience to a supersensible law, or failure to 
prepare for some higher mode of existence. The 



224 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 

tragedy of life, in his eyes, is that men do not know 
how to gain the best in life itself, or that knowing, 
they have not the power to guide will by insight, or 
that knowing and willing, they may be cut off from 
attainment by forces beyond their art to control. 
Such an attitude is not incompatible with beliefs 
and aspirations that pierce the senses' tenuous 
veil. But it gives the lie alike to the theology of 
Tridentine priest and Genevan theocrat. Further- 
more, it could never coexist with the dogma un- 
weariedly proclaimed, that where man possesses no 
metaphysical creed his interest in the passing show 
of things is an illusion, and his morality a parasite. 
" Oar days are few ; therefore, let us make the 
most of them," wrote the imperial sage, Marcus 
Aurelius. "Our days are few. Emptied of tran- 
scendental significance, they are vain and worth- 
less ; let us throw them away," cries the Kantian 
philosophy. The former is the creed of Shake- 
speare, as of Shakespeare's heroes. 

" The time of life is short ! 

To spend that shortness basely were too 
1 Henry IV. , 

V. ii. 82. l«^g' 

If life did ride upon a dial's point, 

Still ending at the arrival of an hour." 

A call to action this ; a message of cheer and 
courage to an age that sees the old theology van- 
ishing into air and knows not yet what the new 
shall be. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



jEsthetic moral judgments, 65; 
72. 

Albany, Duke of, 5. 

All's Well that Ends Well, justifi- 
cation of the title, 147. 

Altruism as a motive in King Lear, 
2 ; as a motive in other plays, 6 ; 
in the absence of strong emotion, 
7, 38; possibilitj' of a conflict 
with egoism, 8 ; not identical with 
desire for perfection of character, 
23, 89; or with aversion from 
sympathetic pain, 87; concep- 
tions of its proper limits, 9 ; Sidg- 
wick's solution, 13 ; in moral im- 
beciles, 121. 

Angelo (in Measure for Measure), 
not a hypocrite, 209. 

Antipathy, immediate, for certain 
vices, 25. 

Antonio (in Merchant of Venice), 
his personality, 197 ; why he ac- 
cepted Shy lock's offer, 196; 12; 
81. 

Antony, character of, 141. 

Antony and Cleopatra, prediction 
of conduct in, 141; conceptions 
of relation between freedom and 
responsibility in, 156. 

Approbation, relation to motive, 1, 
64 ; two grounds of moral appro- 
bation, 65; source of conscious- 
ness of obligation, 59. 

Authoritism defined, 40. 

Autolycus, 128 ; 198. 

Balfour, Arthur, on the popular 
belief in free-will, 157. 



Banquo, a man without principle, 
24. 

Beauty of character, sensitiveness 
to in Shakespeare's world, 16; its 
forms, 17. 

Bertram's character, 145. 

"Born criminal," in the plaj's, 99, 
165; his essential characteristics, 
116 ; female approaches male type, 
129. ,See, also. Moral Imbe- 
cility, 

Bosanquet, 74. 

Brutus, Marcus, his desire for post- 
humous fame, 85; his religious 
beliefs, 210, 215; 7, 14, 25; 58; 
81. 

Camillo, 7, 9. 

Cassius, desire for posthumous fame, 
85. 

" Chance," its role in the plays, 189. 

Character, causes of, 143; the per- 
fect, 23. 

Claudius, King, 26; 62. 

Coleridge, 13; 104; 113; 167. 

Conscience defined, 97 ; awakening 
of in Queen Gertrude, 97; ab- 
sence of, 99. 

Coriolanus (the plaj'), a study in 
the workings of political forces, 
51. 

Coriolanus, why he opposed the 
concessions to the plebeians, 52 ; 
why unwilling to dissemble, 71. 

Criminals, their use of euphemistic 
terms, 110; their desire for com- 
panionship in punishment, 126; 
their indifference to punishment 



228 



Index 



in a future life, 128; Shake- 
speare's portrayal of, in general, 
129. <See, also, Moral Imbe- 
cility. 

Desdemona, attempts to find a 
moral justification for her early- 
death, 193; 12. 

Desire, objects of. See Good. 

Despine, 110; 118; 121; 124; 126; 
131; 137. 

Determinism and indeterminism 
defined, 135 ; their relation to the 
possibility of forecasting conduct, 
137 ; autonomic and fatalistic de- 
terminism distinguished, 136 ; the 
former is the implicit creed of a 
majority of the characters, 137, 
152; the two exceptions, 154. 

Dostoieffsky, 120; 127; 201. 

Eder.sheim, 213. 

Egoism, its reaction upon the agent, 
181, 187. See, also, Altruism. 

Elizabeth, Queen, nature of her 
claims to the English throne, 44. 

Ellis, Ha velock, 119; 124. 

Elze, Karl, 104. 

Enobarbus, 142; 15, 37; 9, 34. 

Ethics, problems of, ix, 1; possi- 
ble divergence between its theo- 
ries and its data, 74. 

Eudffimonism defined, 65. 

Falstaff, indifferent to all pun- 
ishment in a distant future, 128 ; 
15 ; 62. 

Fame, desire for, part played by, 
15, 80; desired as an end in itself, 
81. 

Fatalism defined, 134. 

Faulconbridge (Philip), his char- 
acter, and his place in King John, 
48. 

Faust. 78 n. 

Ferri, 120. 

Feuerbach, 121; 123; 172 n. 



Fichte, J. G., on our consciousness 
of the supernatural source of the 
moral law, 32 ; 10 ; 35. 

Foster, Sir Michael, 45. 

Freedom of the will, four meanings 
of the term, 132 ; what forms re- 
garded as essential to responsi- 
bility, 131, 135, 152. See, also. 
Determinism, Responsibility. 

Gertrude, Queen, awakening of 
conscience in, 97. 

Gervinus, 200. 

Giles, 120. 

Gloucester (in King Lear), source 
of his devotion to Lear, 4; 92. 

Goethe, 78 n ; 206. 

Goneril, contrasted with Regan, 105 ; 
a moral imbecile, 108; discloses 
a trace of moral sensitiveness, 
109. 

Good (6o»?<m) defined, 78; the good 
as the desired, 78, 94; the con- 
tent of, 79; no one formula for 
its content if defined merely as 
the desired, 93; problem of an 
objective standard of, 94 ; neces- 
sity of such a standard, 77; pres- 
ent state of the general problem, 
95. 

Good name, value attributed to, 15, 
80. 

Hamlet, his character, 61 ; chooses 
to become an expert fencer rather 
than to set about avenging his 
father, 207; his views on the re- 
lation of free-will and responsi- 
bility, 154; cause of his perplex- 
ity, 158; his alleged skepticism, 
210,215; 27; 34; 39; 81, 84. 

Happiness, relation of the external 
and internal factors, 194. 

Hazlitt, 113. 

Hector, 82. 

Helena (in All 's Well), her charac- 
ter, 145 ; her deception, 69 ; 191. 



Index 



229 



Henry IV. (the play), penalty of 
treachery in, 160. 

Henry V., his character not trans- 
formed on ascending the throne, 
149; his virtues rewarded, 161; 
asserts his personal rights, 11 ; 
has no scruples about his title to 
the throne, 48 ; his view of the 
nature of political obligation, 51, 
67 ; a believer in the doctrines of 
Christian theology, 214; 23. 

Henry VI., his character, 20; has 
scruples about his title to the 
throne, 48. 

Heredity, its place in the making 
of character according to Shake- 
speare's people, 143; Shake- 
speare's own view, 144. 

Heroic type of moral beauty, 18. 

Hippias, 75. 

Honor, defined, 14 ; value attached 
to it, 14. 

Hudson, 103. 

Iago, a moral imbecile, 109; mo- 
tives for his intrigue, 112; looks 
upon his victims with contempt, 
168 ; exhibits no desire for sym- 
pathy or love of others, 185; the 
penalty of his egoism, 186. 

Idj'llic type of moral beauty, 21. 

Ihering, 12. 

Indeterminism. See Detekmin- 

ISM. 

Intuitionism, . its theory of the 
source of the moral law, 40 ; what 
it mistakes for direct intimations 
of the divine will, 73. 

Isabella, not willing to make an ab- 
solute sacrifice for her brother, 
11, 13; ends for which she is 
willing to sacrifice veracity, 67; 
her moral self-consciousness, 
25. 

JoNSON, Ben, how he made his 
plays reflect his theology, 208. 



Judgment as the equivalent of rea- 
son, 37. 
Justice a product of pity, 67. 

Kant, his view of the nature of 
morality, 29; asserts the con- 
sciousness of the supersensible 
origin of the moral law to be 
universal, 32, 33; denies exist- 
ence of all forms of moral insensi- 
bility, 114. 

Kent, source of his devotion to 
Lear, 3; his death, 4; his skepti- 
cism and its causes, 216. 

King Lear, sources of moral life as 
represented in, 56; cf., also, 2; 
prediction of conduct united with 
imputation of responsibility, 153 ; 
employment of suggestion in, 
218. 

Kreyssig, 57. 

Lacenaire, his character as dis- 
played at his trial, 124; love for 
a cat and indifference to human 
life, 122; use of euphemistic 
terms, 110; his poetry, 126, 127. 

Lady Macbeth, is without moral 
scruples, 170; traces of senti- 
mentalizing, 173; her sufferings 
due to terror, 175 ; sleep-walking 
scene not a representation of re- 
morse, 177; does not understand 
her husband; 182. 

Lear, 2 ; 190. 

Lepidus, his character, 157; on 
freedom and responsibility, 156 ; 
cause of his perplexity, 158. 

Lincoln, President, his theory of 
unselfishness, 88. 

Lombroso, 120; 122; 126; 130. 

Lombroso and Ferrero, 129. 

Las*- as an element in moral 
beauty, 17; not desired merely 
as a means of self-realization, 86 ; 
in moral imbeciles, 122. 

Lowell, J. R., 100 n. 



230 



Index 



Loyalty, nature of, 43; loyalty to 
God, nature of, 41, 54; relation 
of, to consciousness of moral dis- 
tinctions, 55; place of loyalty to 
God in the plaj's, 56. 



Macbeth (the play), the cumula- 
tive effects of evil-doing exhibited 
in, 162 ; Ulrici on evil-doing and 
its punishment in, 192; its sub- 
ject, 163; not a tragedy of re- 
morse, 165. 

Macbeth, indifference to punish- 
ment in a future life, 129; is 
without scruples and remorse, 
165, 175; traces of conscience, 
168; sentinientalism, 169; lone- 
liness and world-weariness, 180; 
alienation from Lady Macbeth, 
181; relation of his despair to his 
temperament, 184; comparison 
with Italian despots, 179. 

Madness, desire for, 91. 

Malvolio, 209. 

Marcus Aurelius, 224. 

Merchant of Venice, absurdities in 
stoni' of the pound of flesh, 195; 
how Shakespeare deals with these 
diflSculties, 196. 

Metaphysics. See Religious be- 
lief. 

Miracle, agency in transformation 
of character denied, 149. 

Miranda, 22; 25. 

Montaigne, 197. 

Moral imbecility defined, 116; 
broader and narrower use of the 
term, 117 ; sometimes innate, 120; 
traces of higher qualities by its 
side, 121 ; indifference to the 
future, 127; evidence of its ex- 
istence, 117; Shakespeare's de- 
lineation of, 99, 165. 

Moral judgments, always deter- 
mined by ideals, 64, 74; two 
forms of, 65. 



Moral life, its fundamental fact, 1. 

Motives at foundation of moral 
life as represented by Shake- 
speare : altruism, 2 ; the place of 
egoism, 9; the sentiment of 
honor, 14; immediate antipathy 
for certain vices, 25 ; cf . also 64 ; 
as represented by Kantianism, 
30; by rationalism, 35; by au- 
thoritism, 40; God's motives in 
commanding and man's in obey- 
ing, 54. 

Much Ado about Nothing, 191. 



Nature, morality defined as obe- 
dience to, 75. 
Nietzsche, 19. 
Northumberland, Earl of, 46, 139. 



Objectivity of moral distinctions, 

201. 
Obligation, consciousness of, its 

nature, 59; as conceived by au- 

thoritism, 55. 
Obligation, political, grounds of, 

45 ; as conceived in the plaj'S, 46 ; 

sometimes based on the right of 

property, 52. 
Othello (the plaj-), prediction of 

conduct in, 140 ; place of the ac- 
cidental in, 190. 
Othello, his love for Desdemona, 

86, 91. 



Pain, aversion from, 91. 

Perdita, 22. 

Philanthropy, WT' 

Pleasure, desire for, 90; not sole 
ultimate object of desire, 85, 87, 
90. 

Pompey, Sextus, 24. 

Prediction of conduct, examples, 
138; bearing on free-will contro- 
versy, 137. 



Index 



231 



Prospero, his religious creed, 213 
7; 23. 

Psychologist's fallacy, defined, 8 
examples, 8, 23. 

Punishment, justification of, 66 
craving for, 118. 

Puritanism, not attacked by Shake- 
speare, 208. 

Ratiokalism, as a form of trans- 
cendentalism, defined, 35. 
Reason, morality as obedience to, 
35; as a motive in the plays, 
36. 
Religious belief, in Shakespeare's 
characters, 58, 210; of Shake- 
speare, 220 ; relation to morality, 
58, 62, 222. 
Remorse, cause of, 160; examples 
of, 159; absence of, in Shake- 
speare's worst criminals, 99, 167, 
170 ; testimony of the authorities 
on criminal psychology, 116. 
Renan, 19. 

Responsibility, relation to freedom, 
131, 135, 152; Shakespeare's 
characters regard it as compatible 
with determinism, 152; two ex- 
ceptions to this rule, 154. 
Richard II. (the play), representa- 
tion of obligation in, 41 ; penalty 
of treachery in, 160. 
Richard II., his character, 46; 47; 

80. 
Richard III. (the play), authorship 
of, 100 n. ; interpolation in, 103. 
Richard III., a moral imbecile, 100; 
his moral insensibility declared 
congenital, 121; his failure due 
to his own misdeeds, 200; 111, 
129, 168,201; 185. 
Romantic dramas, their theology, 
213, 219. 

Saxe, John G., 193 n. 

Schiller, nature of morality as por- 



trayed in his plays, 36 ; his trans- 
lation of the phj'sician's speech 
in Macbeth, 177 ; 21. 
Self-realization, desire for, 79, 90; 
not sole ultimate object of desire, 
81, 86, 89, 90. 
Sentimentality in moral imbeciles, 
123; in Macbeth, 169; in Lady 
Macbeth, 173. 
Shakespeare, scanty evidence of his 
theories of ethics, xi, 221; his 
representation of the objects of 
human desire agrees with the 
doctrines of modern authorities, 
95 ; fidelity to fact in his portraj-al 
of criminals, 129; his views on 
heredity, 144, 149 ; ignores and 
implicitly denies theory of origin 
of virtue and vice held by Eliza- 
bethan church, 151 ; his views on 
distribution of desire for sym- 
pathy, 185 ; his treatment of the 
accidental, 189; does not reveal 
his theology in Hamlet, 207, 212; 
does not attack theological beliefs 
through their adherents, 208; his 
religious beliefs, 220; his view of 
the place of religious belief in 
life, 222; his view of the nature 
of failure in life, 223. 

Sidgwick, Professor, 13. 

Snider, D. J. on the death of Des- 
demona, 193. 

Spencer, Herbert, 191. 

Symonds, on the life of the Italian 
despots, 178. 

Sympathy, desire for, its distribu- 
tion, 185. 



Taswell-Longmead, 45. 

Timon, his last banquet, 26; com- 
bines moral condemnation with 
avowal of determinism, 153. 

Tragedy, its function, 189; its use 
of the accidental, 189. 

Transcendentalism, its account of 



232 



Index 



the moral life: (1) Kantianism, 
30; (2) rationalism, 35; (3) au- 
thoritism, 40; definition of con- 
science, 97; incompatible with 
Shakespeare's representation of 
the moral motives, 64 ; denies 
moral irabecilit}', 114; denies 
congenital moral imbecility, 120. 
Types of moral perfection, 25. 



Ulkici on the punishment of evil- 
doing in Macbeth, 192. 



Utilitarian moral judgments de- 
fined, 65; examples, 66. 



Veracity, casuistry of, 67. 
Vienna, Duke of, a skeptic in the- 
ology, 215; 10; 34; 67, 221. 



Waineweight, Thomas, 124. 
Wendell, Barrett, 106. 
Wordsworth, 21. 



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